Trio of residents crowned state-wide Jeopardy champions at emergency medicine conference

Answer: This virus, originally isolated in 1947 from a rhesus monkey in Uganda, is a flavavirus transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and causes a mild, self-limiting illness that is sometimes is mistaken for Dengue Fever.

Question: What is Zika virus?

Identifying the headline-making virus helped a trio of VCU residents secure the win at the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians’ annual CME conference in early February.

Chief residents Kyle Irby, M.D., and Mike Moss, M.D., along with second-year resident Josh Loyd, M.D., made up the Department of Emergency Medicine’s victorious team. The annual Jeopardy-style competition pitted the residents from VCU’s MCV Campus against physicians in training from the state’s four other emergency medicine residency programs: Eastern Virginia Medical School, the University of Virginia, the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth and Virginia Tech Carilion.

With Michelle Troendle, M.D., F’14, playing Alex Trebek’s role as host, the competition tested residents’ knowledge in a variety of categories like ultrasound, GI and eponyms. Troendle is assistant program director for VCU’s emergency medicine residency program.

Director of the residency program Joel Moll, M.D., FACEP, says, while there’s no specific way to prep for the competition, the questions cover topics residents need to know for both the practice of emergency medicine and to pass their boards.

“We sent all of our second-year residents to the conference, so they were a great source of encouragement,” says Moll, who organized a session during the weekend for residents from all five of the state’s programs. He covered the topic of career options, assistant program director Peter Moffett, M.D., spoke on test taking skills, and a presentation on the future of observation medicine was led by Pawan Suri, M.D., who is director for the emergency medicine-internal medicine program.

This is the second year in a row that VCU’s residents have won the competition. Irby and Loyd are graduates of VCU’s medical school and Moss earned his degree at Ohio State University. In addition to having their names inscribed on the foot-and-a-half high trophy that now sits in the VCU emergency medicine offices, the three competitors each received a $100 gift certificate.

By Erin Lucero