Department Blog - March 2014

Dan Griffith, CPA, Assistant Director of Finance, is a member of the inaugural class of the Leadership Foundations Program of Faculty Physicians, Inc. Participation in the 6-month class is based on an application and acceptance process. The program culminates with the presentation of a group project that describes a new business entity. Congratulations, Dan, on this impressive achievement!

Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, PhD, testified before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce this morning, regarding the national shortage of inpatient psychatric beds and the implications of boarding psychiatric patients in EDs. Dr. Hirshon presented data from the recently published National Report Card on Emergency Care, produced by a task force that he chaired within the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Ali Farzad, MD, has published another interview in his column in Common Sense, the national membership publication of The American Academy of Emergency Medicine. In the current issue, he meets our very own Rob Rogers, MD, at the intersection of traditional academic emergency medicine and revolutionary approaches to teaching, represented by #FOAMed. Their entertaining and provocative exchange can be found here: goo.gl/tpKVjX. Dr. Farzad has published equally engaging interviews with Dr. Amal Mattu (May/June 2012) and Dr. Haney Mallemat (July/August 2013) in this cutting-edge column. The magazine is archived at www.aaem.org/publications/common-sense.

Congratulations to Drs. Sarah Dubbs, Semhar Tewelde, Andi Tenner, and Danya Khoujah for their recent completion of ACEP's Teaching Fellowship. Our emergency medicine program has more graduates of this teachng skills course than any other program in the world. Dr. Amal Mattu, also a graduate of the fellowship, has been a member of its faculty since 2007.

Whitney Cesari, MD, Brad Cotter, MD, and Ben Lawner, DO, presented the evening educational broadcast for EMS providers from the Shock Trauma Center auditorium on March 5. They discussed current treatment protocols and presented an evidence-based approach for common prehospital calls: traumatic brain injury, cardiac dysrhythmia, and respiratory failure. The panel discussion was streamed live, in an interactive format, to 70 prehospital care providers across the state.

Congratulations to Dr. Doug Sward on the publication of his article on wilderness medicine in the current issue of the World Journal of Emergency Medicine. The article provides an overview of the history, areas of practice, and educational opportunities in this specialty area of emergency medicine. Dr. Sward's co-author is Dr. Brad Bennett, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Thier article is available at the journal's website, www.wjem.org.

Dr. Brian Browne was a keynote speaker at the International Summit on Emergency Medicine and Trauma, held in Pondicherry, India, in mid-February. In addition to his plenary session presentation, titled "Integrated Emergency Care," he led a break-out session on lethal rashes. Accompanying Dr. Browne on the trip were Dr. Girish Sethuraman, who presented a talk on burn managemet, and Dr. Michael Rolnick.