SMACC2013 – critical illness does not respect geography

About 6 months ago I posted about the ‘end of the medical conference‘ after a fairly humdrum experience at Rural Medicine Australia 2012 in Perth. This negativity was picked up by others, notably EM-IM Doc

SMACC2013 has changed all that.

No doubt Minh over at prehospitalmed.com and the lifeinthefastlane.com crew will feed out snippets, so I won;t give an exhaustive breakdown.

Suffice it to say, SMACC2013 was noticeable for

– incredible collegiality between ED, ICU, prehospital and rural clinicians, be they student, paramedic, nurse or doctor

– opportunity for meritocracy-type interaction between colleagues from both Australia and overseas

– memorable for Gerard Fennessy delivering part of his anaphylaxis talk in song (ya’ muppet)

– moving and inspiring talks from the likes of Weingart, Lex and Reid

– SCAT paramedics abseiling in from the rafters as GSA-HEMS (lead by Karel Habig) made a surprise last minute showing in SimWars

– excellent organisation and venue. Thanks to the organising committee for all their hard work.

SMACC2014 will be in Brisbane 17-19 March 2014. Book now. Rural doctors – you NEED to embrace FOAMed. Casey “not the porn star” Parker and I have been banging on about this now for sometime – we need to raise the bar and bring “quality care, out there”

So, my mission for 2013-14

(i) to try and persuade ACRRM and RDAA that we need to embrace FOAMed as rural doctors

(ii) to try and implement an Australian version of BASICS – to improve the current gap in rural prehospital care (rural docs with airway/resus skills are well placed to provide appropriate interventions before retrieval arrive – but need to be equipped, trained and have formal call out criteria)

(iii) to ensure that EVERY small rural ED (and better still , every ED, ICU in Australia) is familiar with and engaged in processes such as

– Toby Fogg’s excellent airway registry

– RSI kit dump and checklists

– adequate difficult airway kit and knowing how to use it

– checklists for crisis management and ‘logistics not strategy‘

– regular sim and resus room management training

– NO-DESAT apnoeic diffusion oxygenation and DASH-1a for all RSIs, whether in ED, OT, ICU or prehospital

None of the above ideas (and more) will be unfamiliar to FOAMites – indeed, they’ve been bounced around for a few years now..but still they are not out there where they are most needed. This must change.

Concomitant with that will be more FOAMed relevant to rural docs – not just ‘airway’ and ‘shock’ but of relevance to critical care in the bush

Might seem a big ask..but I can dream.

After all, critical illness does not respect geography!