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Interview with the Author: Michael McCaul on South African prehospital guidelines

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Series: “Interview with the Author…”

Link to open access article: Click here

Corresponding author email: mmccaul@sun.ac.za

Previous linked author interview: https://badem.co.za/afjem-mccaul/

Author’s twitter handle: @MikeMcCaul3

Co-authors: @Research_ambit and @CEBHC

Youtube: Strengthening South African prehospital guideline uptake

Published in: @Plos Volume 14 Issue 14

The badEM crew interviewed Michael McCaul regarding his newly released article in PLoS ONE Volume 14 Issue 7 entitled: “Prehospital providers’ perspectives for clinical practice guideline implementation and dissemination: Strengthening guideline uptake in South Africa.” by Michael McCaul, Lynn Hendricks, Raveen Naidoo. 

 

1. Tell us about yourself and how you got involved in this research?

In 2016, I was involved as a methodologist in the development of the South African AFEM Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) for the Health Professions Council of South Africa. Following that project, we knew that getting the guideline into practice would be a challenge and we as a profession need to acknowledge and address some challenges if these guidelines are to work in practice. Finding solutions to the challenges needed to start with a solid understanding of what the problem is and so we did some research across South Africa to find out. We asked paramedics what they expected to see from the guidelines, to let us know what they expected to be particularly challenging in using them and, importantly, to give us their ideas on how best to implement them.

2. What were the findings?

We received valuable input that will help decision makers disseminate and implement these new emergency care guidelines. Key solutions focused around communication, technology, autonomy and education; highlighting the need for clear and consistent communication from stakeholders, the creation of inclusive career pathways and an end-user document that helps the transition process.

We will act on these findings and our main message to you is that this guideline, based on the best available evidence, is now available for South Africa. Successful uptake will require an understanding of the contextual issues and solutions of the end-users of the guideline. The need for clear communication between stakeholders and a clear implementation plan that is contextually appropriate is recognised and will be developed in order to strengthen guideline uptake.

In order to make sure that our findings are used by the right people, we involved decision makers at the start and throughout the project. These included people from the national department of health and support from the professional board of emergency care. We shared our findings with them, and are now working together to inform conversations among decision makers around getting the evidence into policy and practice, to achieve our ultimate goal of benefit for our patients.

If you want more detail on what we did, then read our open access publication in AFJEM, follow us on Twitter, or check out this useful research summary and infogram.

Check out the full-text open access article:  Click here

Voices from Africa at SMACC

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African Voices at SMACC

During SMACC in Sydney, Doug Lynch, @thetopend, interviewed several African delegates.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the conference organisers with the smaccREACH program.

We are super excited for the future of SMACC under their new banner CODA.

Pendo George, from Tanzania, was the first to be interviewed by Doug for the Jellybean Podcast.

For more information go to Emergency Medicine in Tanzania.

#badEMfest18: The Chronic Pain Toolkit – Rowan Duys

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The Chronic Pain Toolkit 

Dr Rowan Duys 

Rowan, @healthink, is an Anaesthetist practicing at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. He has a key interest in pain management & simulation teaching.

 

Rowan has been a great friend of the badEM crew and joined us at #badEMfest18 to share some great pearls of wisdom on chronic pain.

For some extra resources please visit:

https://www.tamethebeast.org/

https://www.retrainpain.org/

Watch out for #badEMfest20 coming soon.

Thoughts from the Intro to Pain Control in Palliative Medicine Diploma

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Day 3 Pain Management Introduction was taught/facilitated by Dr Rene Kraus.   I will in the future post my version of the “Pain Masterclass” when we do an entire section of the Diploma on pain management.. 

  • When thinking about how we can stop pain in its tracks: we have to think in terms of ascending & descending pathways..
  • Different drugs work on different parts of the pathways, BUT pain is experienced by people & families not nerve pathways!
  • Pain is experienced TOTALLY, and we need to modulate it TOTALLY.
  • NB: The amount of pathology does not equal to the amount of pain. 
  • Pearl of wisdom from Rene: some patients with chronic pain/illness claim to be coping well independently.. have a look at their toenails.. can often give clues on how well the pain is ACTUALLY affecting their functioning!

I would highly recommend my classmates & people interested in dealing with chronic pain in the Emergency Centre / Primary Healthcare / Palliative Medicine watching the below 2 talks by badEM’s friends Iain Beardsell & Rowan Duys

Here are some fantastic resources from Rowan:

https://www.tamethebeast.org/ Great analogy & videos useful for both clinicians/patients/community.

https://www.retrainpain.org/ Fantastic resource for patients, also translated into Afrikaans! Any volunteers in South Africa able to assist translating into more South African languages?

Back to School: Day1 of Palliative Medicine PGDiploma

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I have made the decision to put my student hat back on and start a 1 year Postgraduate Diploma in Palliative Medicine through UCT this year. Day 1 discussions were facilitated by Dr Rene Kraus. Our class are a fascinating group of largely very senior/experienced palliative medicine doctors/nursing staff/allied health colleagues. I am excited to collaborate and learn from the group

History of Palliative Care & Hospice

Hospice traced back to medieval times:
“The first hospice or monastery was built in the 9th century at Bourg-Saint-Pierre, which was mentioned for the first time around 812-820. This was destroyed by Saracen incursions in the mid-10th century, probably in 940, the date at which they also occupied Saint-Maurice. Around 1050, Saint Bernard of Menthon, archdeacon of Aosta, regularly saw travellers arriving terrorised and distressed, so he decided to put an end to mountain brigandage in the area. With this in mind, he founded the hospice at the pass which later bore his name. The church’s first textual mention is in a document of 1125. The hospice was placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Sion, prefect and count of Valais, thus explaining why the whole pass is now in Swiss territory.” – Wikipedia

The Modern Hospice Movement

Dame Cicely Saunders introduced modern hospice movement (click here to read more about her, she was a phenomenal lady who was a nurse, social worker and a medical doctor). She started St Christophers Hospice and the Cicely Saunders Institute 

Where did the concept of ‘Palliative Care’ come from? Dr Balfour Mount from Canada proposed the word palliate, which comes from latin word Pallium which means cloak, because symptoms are “cloaked” or “disguised” with treatments whose primary aim is to provide comfort even if cure is not possible.

Palliative Care Principles – WHO Definition:

Palliative Care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual…. [click here for further part of WHO definition] 

Dr Kraus unpacked the above definition for us into its components:
  • What is QOL? Depends on individual values, presence and absence of certain symptoms. QOL is fundamentally unique to each individual! Don’t apply your version of what good quality of life is to your patients.
  • What is a family? Legal family vs the people the patient perceives to be family.
  • What is a life-threatening illness? Difficult to define and very important to base on your context. Interesting in the international oncology discussion on this topic they spoke about ‘progressive metastatic cancer’, an African oncologist asked that instead we change this to ‘metastatic cancer’ due to different management strategies/interventions available. The SPICT Tool is useful in this regards BUT remember doesn’t mention TB/HIV which is key in our setting.
  • What is suffering? Suffering (patient, family & community) is multi-factorial. Important that suffering & discomfort are not the same thing. Discomfort may be normal or actually necessary.
  • What is spirituality? We will discuss this at a later stage.. as we are doing an entire week theme on it.. Important to understand that Spirituality does not equal Religion. 

Some thoughts/discussion points brought up regarding the definition: Important that not only TREAT suffering, but PREVENT suffering in the first place. Dr Kraus alluded to when her interest in PC began, which was working in rural SA in the height of the AIDS pandemic when ARVs were not yet available. At that stage there was no treatment option available. Something that is discussed a lot in EM circles.. regarding dying as a normal process. Using the “natural death” terminology. We discussed that dying and death is a process/journey not an event. 


Will try and post regular “African” context Palliative Care pearls as the Diploma proceeds

Tips for FOAMed groups based in High Income Countries to help become Freely ACCESSIBLE Medical Education (FAME)

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The below are some random thoughts extracted from my talk at AfCEM 2018 Conference:

Appropriateness:

  • Don’t forget your audience is worldwide not all in the same healthcare context as you – think about your influence.
  • Sometimes flippant comments/assumptions are made by authors that when read by a clinician from low resource context, renders them despondent & confused, instead of motivated & inspired.
  • Ask LMIC clinicians to be involved to peer review posts. May have surprising feedback/suggestions!
  • For every post/material the author should cognitively force themselves by asking “how does this apply to low resource settings, is it necessary to specifically mention resource considerations”
  • Consider loading one year’s worth of podcasts/videos onto cheap flash drives and sending to registrar/residency training programmes around the world.

Technical:

Try list a resource’s (e.g. video/podcast) actual size next to download button, so someone doesn’t have to click download and then cancel quickly when they discover it is 500MB !

Compress files to as small as possible, does the image REALLY have to be that hi-res?

Podcasts:

  • Keep short, or if long try to split into components e.g. Part 1,2,3 (we understand sometimes this is tricky).
  • Consider text summaries of podcasts.

Videos:

  • Ensure downloadable, not just streaming, so that videos can be shared via flashdisks etc. to colleagues.
  • When loading videos up to Youtube, you can set what the lowest quality available for viewing is.

Blogs:

  • If you put a lot of stats/words into infographics, try set the ALT-text in such a way that if reader is viewing website with images switched off, they can still engage with your writing at this level of detail.

Also read here for a great article:

https://www.afjem.org/article/S2211-419X(18)30060-0/fulltext

AfCEM 2018 Day 1: How to get your research published: The 10 commandments

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Summary notes on talk given at AFCEM 2018 “Ten Commandments for getting your research published” by Dr Ellen Webber, Editor in Chief of Emergency Medicine Journal @emjeditor 


A large proportion of studies/research is not published. Improve your chances of getting your chances noticed. Put your best foot forward from the beginning.

  1. Always use a research checklist

Checklists assist you not only to organise your paper, but also to plan your research study. This also ensures that you collect all of the data from the outset. You can get more information and all checklists at the Equator Network, here

  1. Read and obey the instructions for authors

Does your article fit the mission of the journal and do they have a relevant article type for your research? Make sure you have met the requirements for each section.

  1. Sell your research question (in the introduction)

Outline the problem (not lack of knowledge), and say why it is important (the problem, not your study) and what the knowledge gap is. Mention how your study helps the situation of the identified knowledge gap. Avoid taking too long to get to the point of your research question, keep it short. The whole introduction should lead into your research study.

  1. Honour your methods

This is actually the most important part of your manuscript. The methods should demonstrate that you have done your study well by putting in enough detail that your study can be replicated from scratch (and use a checklist to guide the detail). Using sub-headings can assist with this.

 


5.1. Results: Who before what?

Begin with the demographics of the patients/participants that were involved in your study and this is normally reported in Table 1. If you lost patients to follow-up or similar be sure to show the demographic information of the group that was excluded to show that there was no selection bias.

5.2. Results: Match your methods and discussion

Make sure that you do not quote results that were not reported in your methods and vice versa. Do not use results in the discussion that was not reported in the results. Do not provide an interpretation of your results here. Stick to the facts only.

  1. Discuss and don’t ramble

Provide a brief, plain English summary of what your most important findings are – no numbers – here in the first two sentences of your study. Contextualise your study and mention how your results or study is different from previous studies and how you add to previously published literature. In addition, can you explain why you are observing this. Here, you can especially highlight how your results (from the LMIC setting) is different from other studies (from HICs).
Discuss the limitations plainly and honestly. Mention explicitly the implications of your study (think press release). The implications should be specific and if “more research is needed” mention exactly what should be asked or done.
Sell the research question, but not the result! You should set up the question so that a positive or negative finding is important. Do not try and spin negative results either! Interestingly, negative data are often statistically more trustworthy than positive data.

  1. Revise the abstract

Provide a short but compelling background statement. Your methods should generally be longer (dates, setting, inclusion criteria, outcomes and your type of analysis). For the results, firstly mention who is in your study and provide the result of your primary outcome. Your conclusion should in one or two sentences summarise your main result (as in the discussion) and one sentence regarding the implications of your result.

  1. Seek criticism

Give your paper to someone for constructive criticism who knows nothing about your study, but something about your field.

  1. Check your work

Check for typos and grammar issues by reading it without track changes. Make sure your tables match text and that your references are complete and in the format of the journal. Make sure that your word counts are in line with the author instructions.

  1. Submit and submit again

You have an ethical obligation to publish and disseminate your research. Research suggests that the number of submissions is not related to the quality of the research study. Most authors are not published because they give up too soon. Peer review should be considered as free mentoring, and learn from your mistakes.

  1. Submit again!

[Note from the blog editors: Interesting discussion in questions afterwards about researchers who are not first language English speakers. Need to find mentors who are willing to look at language NOT be authors on papers! There are paid services for this but there are other options such as Authoraid. https://www.authoraid.info/ If you are looking for help on your paper or are willing to assist authors please check them out! You may also want to look at the authorship guidelines by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that outline the conditions for authorship contributions on a research article, here.]

For other posts/talk summaries click here

AfCEM 2018 – Day 1: Opening Plenaries & Education

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Two of the badEM crew Kat Evans & Willem Stassen attended the 4th African Conference of Emergency Medicine 7-9 November 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda. They are being assisted in blogging the conference also by Dr Clint Hendrikse(Cape Town) & Dr Mina Naguib (Manchester)
One concept that will likely run through this conference is the concept of Ubuntu. A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole – Desmond Tutu

Introductions:

The Rwandan Minister of Health Dr Diane Gashumba @DianeGashumba welcomed & opened the conference and spoke about breaking the barriers in emergency medicine & discussing concrete solutions to huge barriers to emergency care. It is fantastic to see the minister of health has such a great understanding of the importance of emergency care. Emergency Care forms part of multiple Rwandan policies as a priority area for development 2050. It is fantastic to see that the minister of health is a paediatrician, so she truly understands how critical emergency care is for the healthcare system and is reflected in her stressing the importance of healthcare worker wellbeing. 
Introductions were also made by Gabin Mbanjumucyo, to the first group of Rwandan Emergency Physicians to qualify: Bernard Nsengiyumva, Chantal Uwamohoro, Ernest Nahayo, Oliver Felix Umihire and Ezechiel Nteziryayo. 

Book: “Oxford AFEM Handbook of Acute and Emergency Care”

The new and exciting 2nd edition of this incredibly helpful handbook was launched at the event by the editors Prof Lee Wallis, Dr Keegan Checkett and Prof Teri Reynolds. The first edition was published in 2013 and was disseminated into the hands of frontline workers across Africa. The book was available to be bought at the conference and hopefully will be available to be bought online soon, keep an eye out for it on www.afem.info They are also looking for sponsors to help get more copies of the 2018 version printed and distributed.

Book/Resource/Training Course: “Basic Emergency Care: Approach to the acutely ill and injured”

Editors: Andy Tenner, Heike Geduld, Teri Reynolds, Nikki Roddie (some of whom are at this conference and were introduced). This incredible World Health Organisation #FOAMed resource was released this month. The fulltext PDF version of book along with the slideset for instructors are freely available below: https://www.who.int/emergencycare/publications/Basic-Emergency-Care/en/

Book/Resource/Training Course: “Emergency Unit management in low-resource settings”

A new WHO Training Course that is KEY in low resource settings was also launched. In Africa when an EM Physician or EM Nurse qualifies we suddenly have to step in and start or run a unit, often alone! We just aren’t trained for that. The entire course will become freely available soon as a #FOAMed resource. The slideset, facilitator guide and student guide will become open access, as soon as peer review processes and refinement are complete (manyattendees of the conference are also involved in this process, African Solutions to African problems!) It helps that this resource is being published by the WHO because the credibility of the name can be used to advocate to your political decision-makers in ministries/departments of health.

Defining and building EM – using a moving target: James Ducharme (Canada & President of IFEM)

Canada

James is the current president of IFEMHe led with the comment, “EM is the poorest defined speciality ever developed”. Why did EM start? EM filled a gap – a lack of organised trauma systems (US and Canada). But gaps are different in Africa – therefore the definition of EM varies: a shifting scale of definition.

Training programmes do not teach residents/prepare them for what they actually are going to do: social issues, geriatrics, chronic pain, drug seeking, centre of last resort. Building blocks for EM systems are different in each country/setting – depending on the specific needs of the community and availability of resources. The basic building blocks are similar though. External experts are unable to define building blocks required. 
We should constantly state what we will NOT provide; we often advocate for all patients in the EC (including those not requiring emergency care), leading to us failing those who actually require EC. We have adopted maladaptive behaviours (because of failures in other systems) to the detriment of our patients. We should define emergency care in our setting and be the advocate for patients requiring emergency care.  We have become the safety net for the health system. Instead, we have to ask our health care managers, What are YOU doing about these non-emergency issues?” 

Who we are, where we are going: The identity (r)evolution of emergency care in Africa – Dr Heike Geduld @heikegeduld (South Africa President of AFEM)

South Africa

The current fearless leader of AFEM, who will be, after this conference, handing over the reigns to Dr Ben Wachira from Kenya. [Personal note from Kat: Heike is one of my biggest role-models & I hope that one day I am 5% of what a phenomenally wise & inspiring person that she is].
So how/where did AFEM start? In 2009 AFEM started as a lunch-break meeting at another conference and the agenda/programme of the meeting was only the words “African Emergency Care.” Look how far they have come!
So what is AFEM? Heike mentions how it doesn’t feel like a society; “we don’t really know what it is.” Then how is it doing so much? “We are the sum of thousands of interconnected stories of EC across Africa, we are a community, the spirit of Ubuntu, a network of people constantly evolving organically in response to the needs of the community.
Check out the AFEM curriculum that was developed out of needs of the African EC community, here: https://afem.africa/resources/ 
Heike also mentioned 3 important concepts:
  1. ‘Servant Leadership’: which I love: it values diverse opinions, cultivates a culture of trust, develops leadership in others, encourages and, thinks about others. 
  2. ‘Agency’: Is our capacity to act independently and make our own choices. We need to claim our identity as African emergency care providers to increase our sense of agency.
  3. ‘Revolution’: In thinking about what AFEM is and does and what African Emergency Care wants to achieve, we need to think about what we CANNOT do. There are 40 countries in this room, the majority are clinicians, and our view of health is limited by our fairly clinical viewpoint. If we want to make bigger change, on a bigger level, we need to open our minds to broader viewpoints. Think about emergency care system development in conjunction with social welfare experts, politicians, engineers, epidemiologists, patients and multiple spheres of knowledge. How do we bring these other people in? We cannot do this alone, we need to pull in stories of emergency care from non-emergency care people. 

Unpacking the essential elements of emergency nursing in Africa: Petra Brysiewicz (South Africa) @petrabrysiewicz

South Africa

Petra Brysiewicz is a professor in the School of Nursing & Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. She has worked with research and education of health professionals in South Africa and Africa for 20 years, predominately in the area of acute/emergency care.
Successful emergency nursing programmes rely on six essential elements.
  1. Recognise nurses impact:
  • Nurses are well positioned for the emergency centre (biggest group of health professionals). They are incredibly trusted by communities; nurse practitioners are well trusted by patients. Evidence suggests that nurse practitioners outscore other health providers with regards to quality of care and patient satisfaction. Trauma nurse practitioners – evidence that they decrease LOS, patient satisfaction, and complications. 
  1. Essential knowledge and skills:
  • Great strides were made with regards to nursing education challenges and solutions in Sub Saharan Africa however, strategic leadership and mentors are required.
  • Selfassessment survey of nurses in Kwazulu Natal: only 52% competent to perform CPR, 64% to assess GCS,42% to administer drugs in cardiac arrest.
  • Outdated and static curriculum and a mismatch between needs and curricula becoming a barrier to effective education.
  • Developing a framework for emergency nursing practice in Africa; social accountability is a essential for transforming nursing education – link to article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2012.09.001
  • New type of learners – with different needs and strengths – Curricula should be dynamic and adaptive.
  1. Research and Scholarship:
  • Researchophobia – research need to be demystified.
  • PHD vs doctor of nursing practice (practice scholar vs research scholar) –  new PhD in practice, instead of research – great for nursing leaders in Africa.
  • Qualitative research undervalued: evidence that inform recommendations.
  1. Career pathing and role models
  2. Be innovative 
  • Blue skies thinking – no limits (old ways don’t open new doors)
  1. Make nurses visible:
  • Nurses “operate under the radar” – they are trained to be silent; The public and media unaware of the importance of nursing; traditional subservience still common;  The media ignores nurses – don’t really understands what nurses do – a good example is the Thailand Cave Rescue – very little emphasis on the nurse that was part of the team. 
These 6 elements play an important role in a successful nursing programme.

Stream 1: Novel education methods

Medical education during the digital era – Prof Stephen Rulisa (Rwanda)

Rwanda

Things have changed & suddenly educators were caught unaware!  The world of IT is changing faster than the teachers’ ability to change. As educators we need to catch up to ensure to try and keep up with the learners! Get your material onto facebook! The students can be found “inside of the book of faces more than the books of the university!“
Interesting move at Prof Rulisa’s university: Teachers who are not uploading their teaching onto the university IT sharing platform lose points on their performance reviews! Forcing “old school” educators to catch up with the times!

Teaching procedures in EM: 7 steps to success: Mindi Guptill

United States

Traditionally in medical school we all have heard “see one, do one, teach one”. This was the mantra that was used but this mantra breaks down in emergency medicine. Mindi discussed a 7 step process for procedural teaching.
  1. Conceptualisation (at home) – preparation to learn the procedure, indications, contraindications, patient counselling. We can do this but simply getting the student to read something, eg procedure textbook or FOAM resource such as LITFL
  2. Visualisation (at home) – view the procedure in its entirety eg video 
  3. Verbalisation – instructor should talk-through entire procedure step by step, learner to narrate it back, this cements the correct sequence
  4. Guided Practice – in a step-wise fashion, from sub-component practice to linkage practice. Do microskills, break up the procedures into smaller parts and teach components separately. Some microskills can be practiced at home!
  5. Feedback – to facilitate perfect practice, do not let them do it wrong, stop them so they don’t get motor-imprinting of incorrect practice.  Can also consider video for feedback.
  6. Skill Mastery – repeat practice regularly, spaced repetition
  7. Autonomy – do on real patient!

Simulation Education: Simple solutions for effective education: Dustin Smith

Three key messages:
  1. skills acquired from simulation can be transferred to real patients
  2. simulations do not have to be expensive to be effective
  3. commitment from learners and a safe environment 
Dunning-Kruger Effect: Students in the lower quadrant of performance often have a perception that they know a lot more than they do. Difficult to reset their goals.
Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve: lose 40% in 20 minutes 
Spaced Repetition – repeating training of a skill over time – better retention with every repeat.
NERDS approach to teach simulation
  • Nickel down – investment ensures engagement – “why do you think the baby passed out?”
  • Evidence – “what do you think the literature suggest around…”
  • Rules – lay down rules at the begging
  • Do – guided practice of skill
  • Stop – as soon as a mistake is made – and correct immediately
Feel safe to make mistakes: students need to feel safe and comfortable to make mistakes and learn. Introduction to session should include a discussion around this. 
Psychological fidelity vs engineering fidelity  (how well does this mannikin look like the real deal) High fidelity simulation not always better.

Breaking barriers in #MedEd: Better educator… better clinician: Janis Tupesis

Janis brought some insights on the changing paradigm in how we share information. We dont need to remember Ransons Criteira anymore, we can ask Siri! Everyone is collating/crowdsourcing information.. governments, university. Allows you to connect to your peers and share what you are doing in real-time.
Some thoughts: 
  1. Shared social networks that focus on emergency care in Africa – clinical care, education, leadership & development
  2. Shared online educational resources that are specific to emergency care in Africa
  3. The use of tech to further develop implement locally applicable educational materials, clinical guidelines &research programs.
  4. Better together!

Postgraduate EM teaching in Botswana: Megan Cox

Australia

Megan is previous head of department in Botswana and led the programme that recently graduated 3 EM Physicians: They are all close to my [Kat] heart in Cape Town as they completed some of their specialist rotations in our programme. Botho, Sebakeng & Kago are fantastic EM Physicians and we are super proud of them! Megan worked for 4-6 years as the only specialist EM Physician in the country!
Lesson 1: EM education needs an EM culture: Needs an appropriate workplace, space, equipment, triage, guidelinesclinical EM educators, students need to see EM in action
Lesson 2: Everyone needs EM education. Megan spoke about the 3min “elevator pitch” about EM that she gave to minister of health when she became ill and presented to the Emergency Centre! Clarify to everyone the EM role & expertise. Get EM education, introductions for all the hospital, engage prehospital providers, nursing and medical students (final year best to allow collation of knowledge from other departments)
Lesson 3: Dont assume EM knowledge, start with basics but also dont reinvent wheel! Don’t try create all your own guidelines from scratch! Other guidelines you can use www.emergencymedicinekenya.org / www.afem.africa/resources / EM Guidance www.emct.info/em-guidance.html/ FAME/FOAM / new WHO coursementioned above / AFEM handbook
Lesson 4: EM education is a team sport
  • Collaborative training – Involve other departments when you are the only EMP in country. Don’t try to do it all yourself!
  • Vary the modality of educational interventions: lectures case presentations, quizzes esp ECG, radiology, use PBL, praatical sessions, trial exams, watch videos, journal club (AFJE), sims, M&M meetings
  • Be careful of well-meaning international speakers who don’t understand the healthcare context. Need to guide & direct the content & discussions regarding suitability of management, equipment knowledgecultural appropriateness. Teaching on completely unobtainable interventions can make students despondent.
Lesson 5: EM Research is challenging (and you need lots of help!) [ Kat: new residency programmes can consider engaging www.authoraid.info ]
Lesson 6: The “soft skills” can be much more like “hard skills” in the African context. When a new EM Physician qualifies they are likely to be a head of department. Leadership, management of complaints, conflict resolutions, medical professionalism and recognition of diagnostic biases are critical. [Kat: The WHO course mentioned in the first talk will hopefully be a great resource for this]

No more snores from the back of the Room: Transform your classroom teaching for better student retention and attention: Amelia Pousson (USA)

United States

Fascinating talk FULL of pearls of wisdom. Great framework adapted from learningscientists.org. Incredibly simplified take-home points below.
  1. Find the love – Earn attention from the classroom with our own enthusiasm and motivation. It cost nothing to be enthusiastic. There are two types of learners: fixed mindset vs growth mindset.
  2. Interleaving – Switch between ideas while teaching, we cant really focus beyond 15mins. Go back over the ideas again in different orders to strengthen your understanding
  3. Concrete examples: Use specific examples to understand abstract ideas
    1. If you know that a particular case/medical problem is hard to manage or badly managed: ask students to“collect” those cases & bring them to class. In business they use Harvard Business Review, some options in EM to use are JETem http://jetem.org/ CPC https://westjem.com/cpc_em
  4. Elaboration: Explain & describe ideas with many details

SMACC SYDNEY

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SMACC Sydney 25 - 29 March 2019

SMACC Sydney…… “Will be the best SMACC yet”

Ticket Ballot opens in just over 8 hours….

Don’t miss out, register on the SMACC Website on Monday

The greatest conference!!

I attended my first SMACC in 2016 and man it was great!!!!

A community of people that truly believe in sharing their knowledge, empowering other people to educate just as well or even better than what they do.

I want to say come and attend this conference and learn, but that will not be true. Come and attend this conference and become part of a community of learning.

SMACC 2019 will see our very own @kat__evans speak on the main stage.

Hope to see you there.

badEM Team

Trending Towards Togetherness

Ubuntu

We are still so proud of Annet Alenyo’s talk about UBUNTU last year…..

#badEMfest18: Human/kind – Andy Tagg

150 150 Jo Park-Ross

Guest Author: Andy Tagg

When Kat Evans came and spoke at DFTB17 on the state of emergency medicine in South Africa she was all abuzz about this new conference that the badEM crew were going to put on. As she had made the effort and travelled all the way to Australia I thought it only right to return the favour. I’d said that I was happy to speak about “anything paediatric” but I think the team only read the word “anything”.

I’d often written about the importance of the soft skills in medicine but to talk about “How to be kind” and in just 15 minutes? That was a real challenge.

So I delved into the literature about the benefits of kindness – to ourselves and to others. I found out how it made us live longer, healthier and happy lives and I came up with a way to frame it so we could all practice a little kindness every day.

Stop

Put your notes down and pay attention to the person in front of you. Commit to giving them your time and attention.

Look

Actually look at your patient – look them in the eyes. We make hundreds of non-verbal cues every minute. If you don’t look at them then you won’t see them.

Listen

Don’t interrupt. Doctors generally interrupt their patients within 18 seconds of the start of the consultation. Try to listen without judgement, allow the patient to talk out their piece and clarify your understanding of the situation.

Think

Everyone has a story to tell. To most of our patients this visit to the doctors is the most important thing that will happen to them this year, if ever. Try and put yourself in their place.

Just by doing these four things then we can be a little kinder – to our patients, to ourselves and to our partners.

Watch the full presentation from the conference below!

If you want to know more then you can read my blog posts on the why and how of kindness over at www.dontforgetthebubbles.com

Andy Tagg is an Emergency Physician with a special interest in education and lifelong learning. Andy is one of the founding members of the excellent pediatric blog Don’t Forget The Bubbles. Read more from Andy here.