Issue Four 2026 Editor's Pick

What Makes Emergency Medicine Meaningful?

Conversations about physician well-being often focus on burnout and professional distress. Akhavan and colleagues shift the lens to an equally important question: What brings emergency medicine residents professional satisfaction? This focus on trainees is particularly valuable, as much of the prior literature on this topic has centered on practicing physicians.

Using free-text survey responses from nearly 4,000 residents nationally, the authors found that the leading driver of satisfaction was people, team culture, and community, followed by positive impact on patients, work-life balance, meaningful patient interactions, and clinical variety. These priorities were notably consistent across demographic groups, training year, and program length. For emergency medicine educators, these findings are both reassuring and actionable.

We may not control every external force affecting our specialty, but we have considerable influence over the environments in which residents train. The authors suggest concrete opportunities, including deliberately sharing positive patient feedback and preserving the flexibility and predictability residents value in shift-based work. At a time when emergency medicine continues to grapple with questions of recruitment, workforce, and professional fulfillment, this study offers a useful perspective. Understanding what threatens well-being matters, but so does understanding what makes our residents want to stay, grow, and find meaning in the work. That is a conversation worth having in every residency program.

A. R. Akhavan, K. W. Scott, P. Hewes, et al., “Drivers of Professional Satisfaction in Emergency Medicine Residency Training in the US,” AEM Education and Training 10, no. 4 (2026): e70228, https://doi.org/10.1002/aet2.70228.

Jaime Jordan, MD, MAEd
Oregon Health & Science University
AEM E&T Associate Editor