The most awesome conference ever, smaccGOLD is fast approaching.
I was privileged to attend smacc2013 in Sydney last year and present at one of the sessions. It was truly humbling to be at such a friendly conference, with like-minded people – and although badged as a ‘critical care’ conference, there were attendees from ED, rural medicine, nursing, paramedicine, primary care, prehospital as well as the expected anaesthetists & intensivists. So I’m looking forward to helping out in the pre-conference Airway Workshop, and joining the big stage to debate Minh le Cong on “real airway doctors don’t use checklists“. I would encourage other rural doctors, nurses – indeed ANYONE with an interest in critical care (especially as to how it is applied outside of the ICU – in ED, in the bush, at the roadside) to come along to smaccGOLD.
This year a few of the rural clinicians have decided to put themselves in “harms way” – to submit a team for the SimWars competition. We are up against some stiff competition – reigning champions, the St Emlyn’s crew lead by Prof Simon Carley – as well as a host of other strong candidates. Our team has the added disadvantage of the team members never having worked together before – let alone trained. Casey is up in ED in Broome; on the other side of the continent, Minh is with RFDS in Far North Queensland and Tamara is in ED on the Sunshine Coast…meanwhile I am down on an island off the coast of South Australia.
This is a true resuscitation ‘flash team’ – although highly trained individuals (well, with perhaps the odd exception), we are going to be expected to perform as a team…despite never having worked together. A bit like the night shift gathering of ICU reg, ED reg and assorted junior RMOs at the bedside or a crash call. Andy Buck of the ETMcourse writes more about this at resusroom.mx.
So…here’s our entry.
https://vimeo.com/85294479
If you want to see us perform, come along to smaccGOLD – this will be but one of many educational events interspersed with fantastic speakers (my old mate Mark Wilson from London is coming over – a HEMS doc AND neurosurgeon, plus ex-GP. So he is well-placed to advise on ‘burr holes in the bush‘).
It’s gonna be epic…