Resus Room Feng Shui

It’s been a pleasure to present at the biannual EMSA2014 (Emergency Medicine South Australia 2014) in Adelaide, South Australia.

Like smaccGOLD (social media & critical care conference, Gold Coast 2014), the audience was an nice mix of clinicians – grizzled old rural doctors, hardcore emergency physicians, vastly experienced emergency nurses and paramedics…as well as a nice smattering of students.

As always, I suffer from a degree of ‘imposter syndrome’ – what can a rural doctor possibly have to say of interest to this sort of audience?

Spot the Imposter
Spot the Imposter

Unlike smaccGOLD, many of the audience were naive to the concept of #FOAMed (free open access medical education) – so I opted to tell a personal story of how my practice as a rural clinician has changed in the past 2 years, shaped by the mentors in the photo above

“as a rural clinician, FOAMed means there is no longer an excuse for my lack of knowledge to be the weak link in patient care”

In order to close the loop, I’ve made a commitment to put my slides and relative links up on the blog for new FOAMed acolytes to explore.

https://vimeo.com/104252530

This whole talk is of course based around the concept of managing oneself, the team, the environment as well as the patient – a concept taken from Cliff Reid’s excellent ‘Making Things Happen’ talk from smacc2013 in Sydney. Worth watching this talk as well as many of the other talks from the smacc conferences past, present…and future.

FOAMed weblinks

smacc.net.au

RAGE podcast (resuscitationists awesome guide to everything)

BroomeDocs

PreHospitalMedicine

Intensive Care Network

Lifeinthefastlane

smacc podcast on iTunes

AmboFOAM

EMCrit

Levitan & Weingart on apnoeic diffusion oxygenation

Emergency Trauma Management course

We’ve ALL got great talks, great slides, great ideas which we share in tutorials, at rounds, at conferences – the ethos of FOAMed is to share this educational content with colleagues around the world.

The concept has been enthusiastically taken on by clinicians in emergency medicine and critical care, who recognise the value of a means of rapidly disseminating information to discuss cutting edge concepts.

Of course once still needs didactic teaching, to read textbooks and to peruse journals as the foundation of medical education – but once one has achieved a degree of competency in the field and is looking to keep abreast of new ideas, FOAMed opens up a world of self-directed learning. It’s for finesse and mastery, not the basics.

Added to this are the advantages of learning asynchronously – listening to a podcast on the morning commute or at the gym…watching a video to reinforce the details of a practical procedure or to watch a conference talk…or even reading clinical conundrums posed on the myriad of EM and CC blogs out there.

As one explores the global FOAMed community, discussions are had with colleagues around the globe, allowing informal ‘corridor conversations’ with like-minded colleagues. Not only that, but experts in various fields give freely of their time and experience – it’s nice to be able to tap into (and even discuss) ideas with people like Karim Brohi, Scott Weingart and so on…

Finally FOAMed helps break down tribalism – we’re all interested in patient care and advancing clinical knowledge (whether our own, or the global sum). Some of the best contributors come not from ’eminence-based’ medics…but from other arenas. I’ve learned a helluva lot from my colleagues in prehospital care, with many lessons applicable to rural, Ed and ICU environments. Ditto the involvement of nurses, paramedics, students, social workers, administrators – people with a different spin on the work we do.

So – don’t be scared – dive in, explore the FOAMed (free open access medical education).

2 thoughts on “Resus Room Feng Shui”

  1. Pingback: Remote Resus Room Planning by Leeuwenberg - Intensive Care NetworkIntensive Care Network

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