As emergency medicine (EM) education evolves, a more advanced understanding of education scholarship is required. This article is the first in a series of three articles that reports the recommendations of the 2013 education scholarship consensus conference of the Academic Section of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. Adopting the Canadian Association for Medical Education's definition, education scholarship (including both research and innovation) is defined. A rationale for why education scholarship should be a priority for EM is discussed.

Emergency medicine (EM) is defined, in part, by clinical excellence across an immense breadth of content and the provision of exemplary bedside teaching to a wide variety of learners. The specialty is also well-suited to a number of emerging areas of education scholarship, particularly in relation to team-based learning, clinical reasoning, acute care response, and simulation-based teaching. The success of EM education scholarship will be predicated on systematic, collective attention to providing the infrastructure for this to occur. Specifically, as a new generation of emergency physicians prepares for education careers, academic organizations need to develop means not only to identify potential scholars but also to mentor, support, and encourage theircareers. This paper summarizes the supporting literature and presents related recommendations from a 2013 consensus conference on EM education scholarship led by the Academic Section of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.

Successful emergency medicine (EM) education scholarship requires a systematic approach that includes searching the (grey) literature, mobilizing resources, adopting frameworks to focus the innovation, integrating a component of program evaluation, and disseminating the innovation via traditional and emerging avenues. This paper provides direction for EM teachers and educators looking to transform their education innovation into scholarship. Recommendations on producing EM education scholarship from the 2013 consensus conference of the Academic Section of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians are presented.