Department Blog - June 2015

The May 2015 issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America contains two review articles on infectious diseases, written by members of the EM faculty. The first, on the topic of Ebola, was compiled by the team of Drs. Mercedes Torres, Dave Jerrard, and Karen Hansen, at the height of national attention on the emergency medical system’s readiness to receive and treat patients suspected of carrying the virus. The second, by Dr. Ferras Khan, covers the enterovirus outbreak. These special-request publications were written on short notice earlier this year, in response to the outbreaks that were occurring at the time, with the goal of providing timely and applicable diagnostic and managemnet informtion to emergency medicine practitioners.

Drs. Jenny Guyther, Roger Stone, and Ben Lawner were faculty members for EMS Care 2015, held in Ocean City from April 30 to May 3. This popular annual event, sponsored by the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, drew 250 prehospital care providers to its hands-on workshops, pre-conferences, lectures, and small group seminars. Dr. Guyther presented a lecture on the management of pain in children in the field. Dr. Stone co-led a case review of on-scene communications and presented a session on the pitfalls of downgrading from advanced to basic life support. Dr. Lawner presented the keynote address, covering recent articles in the EMS literature and the application of their findings to long-standing protocols, and a lecture on the use of resuscitation fluids in trauma patients.

Mike Winters, MD, Joe Martinez, MD, and Haney Mallemat, MD, along with Bill Brady, MD, from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, published a review of recent critical care articles, covering the topics of cardiac arrest, sepsis, pulmonary embolism, ultrasound, and acute ischemic stroke. Their article appears in the June 2015 issue of the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, was a faculty member for the Maryland Resuscitation Academy, held on May 18 and 19 in Columbia. The goal of the 2-day conference, co-hosted by the Howard County Department of Fire Rescue Services and MIEMSS, was to provide education that will optimize outcomes after sudden cardiac arrest. The program is modeled after the Resuscitation Academy developed by Seattle Medic One and King County EMS in Washington state.

Michael Witting, MD, MS, and Mak Moayedi, MD, published an article titled “Incidence of Advanced Intravenous Access in 2 Urban EDs” in the May 2015 issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. Their co-authors include Bryan Stover, MD, and Ashley Miller, BA, who were students at the University of Maryland School of Medicine at the time of the study and manuscript preparation. The investigators found a similar incidence (3.2%) in the need for advanced techniques to establish an IV line at UMMC’s adult ED and the ED at Mercy Medical Center. Their findings have implications for resource utilization, including strategies to minimize the delays in care that are associated with difficulty in gaining IV access.

Amal Mattu, MD, received the Distinguished Educator Award from the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors in April. The award recognizes Dr. Mattu's success in the development of enduring educational materials, specifically his publication of ECGs for the Emergency Physician (with sales of 30,000 around the world and translations into Portuguese, Polish, Chinese, and Japanese) and his online curriculum, ECG Weekly, through which Dr. Mattu has posted weekly ECG cases since September 2011. This online tutorial has been viewed by health care providers in more than 200 countries and has logged 6.2 million minutes (12 years!) of video time watched.

Terry Mulligan, DO, MPH, along with colleagues from the United Kingdom, Australia, and other medical centers in the United States, published an article in the May issue of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine, which presents a framework for a continuing professional development curriculum. The article was written on behalf of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine, as the third in a series that began with the publication of model curriculums for undergraduate (medical school) and graduate (residency) training. It also presents a detailed tabulation of the features of national continuing medical education programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, and China.

Barrie Bostick, MD, Melissa Rice, MD, and Ashley Strobel, MD, all EM/Peds residents, participated in the Teddy Bear Clinic at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center on Saturday, May 30. Dozens of children and their teddy bears experienced the full emergency department treatment, from registration and triage to the examination and the use of splints and nebulizers, as required. This semi-annual community outreach program helps to demystify the emergency medicine process for children and their parents.