SIG on Emergency Medicine annual report

Dr Victor Ng, convenor, SIG on Emergency Medicine reports:

This past year has been a time of tremendous growth for the Special Interest Group on Emergency Medicine (SIG EM). The number of members who have indicated interest to join our SIG now number more than 150 with many members who are active participants. Members value the quarterly updates that are sent out highlighting activities by SIG members and opportunities for members to engage and be involved.

Throughout the year, we have encouraged our SIG members to contribute both to family and emergency medicine related events within their own local regions and at WONCA conferences. I am happy to report that our SIG continues to maintain a strong and ever-growing presence at conferences around the world.

Some important local events are highlighted by Dr Nisanth Menon’s work in promoting the Rectify workshops in India which teaches and reinforces basic emergency medicine skills to family medicine providers. Dr Menon is a strong believer in team-based care and has presented to numerous other health professionals such as nurses to enhance the capabilities of emergency medicine care teams. Dr Nisanth also led the development of a video in collaboration with various other international organizations to celebrate World Emergency Medicine Day and this can be viewed here.

The SIG Emergency Medicine has also committed to be a strong presence at WONCA regional and world conferences through organizing multiple workshops. Over this past year, we have led several workshops at the WONCA world conference in Seoul and at regional conferences in Kyoto and Bratislava. One key highlight has been the escape room concept workshop that Dr Elena Klusova and colleagues developed. This is a novel technique that combines a popular recreational activity like the escape room with learning objectives related to emergency medicine. In this case, the topic was toxicology and complications of recreational substance use. This workshop had its debut at WONCA Europe conference in Bratislava and had excellent participation from attendees. Let’s hope that Dr Klusova will continue delivering this workshop at subsequent conferences!

Beyond the many educational workshops that have been delivered, the SIG EM is also active in advocacy. We continue to assist the WONCA world secretariat in reviewing World Health Organization technical papers and preparing position statements to strengthen our advocacy efforts at World Health Assemblies.

This upcoming year will include many highlights. Most significantly, our SIG EM will be collaborating with the General Practitioners Association of Nepal to host the first ever emergency medicine seminar in Kathmandu, Aug 9-10, 2019. We anticipate hundreds of attendees from Nepal and around the world and should prove to be a great event with world class presentations and workshops.

The highlights discussed in this report are merely a sampling of all the great work that our SIG members have accomplished. I want to acknowledge the time and energy our members have contributed to WONCA in advancing the discipline of family medicine.