Department Blog - January 2017

Members of the Maryland delegation to this year’s annual meeting of the National Association of EMS Physicians, held in New Orleans last week, received top honors for their poster presentation, “Preliminary and Potential Impacts of a Multi-Phase Intervention Utilizing an EMS-Human Services Partnership on Call Volumes Generated by EMS Super-Users.” The poster presented results of a study of call volumes received by the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service before and after partnership with the county’s Department of Health and Human Services. By connecting “super-users” with community care resources, the partnership reduced this vulnerable group’s call volume by 64%. The study was conducted by members of the fire and rescue service, working in collaboration with Roger Stone, MD, MS, Clinical Assistant Professor and Medical Director, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, Assistant Professor (now Director of Prehospital Services, Allegheny General Hospital), and Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, PhD, Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine.

Elizabeth Phillips, MD, MA, has been appointed chair of the Committee on Ethics and Judicial Affairs for MedChi (The Maryland State Medical Society). This committee considers questions of medical ethics, especially in relation to social policy issues, interprofessional relations, hospital relations, confidentiality, advertising, communications with the media, fees and charges, record practice matters and professional rights and responsibilities.

Another article from our EM research group: Jasjeet Bhullar, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Veena Bhopale, MPhil, PhD, Lab Manager, Ming Yang, MD, Research Associate, Kinjal Sethuraman, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, and Stephen R. Thom, MD, PhD, Professor, published the article titled “Microparticle Formation by Platelets Exposed to High Gas Pressures – An Oxidative Stress Response” in the December issue of Free Radical Biology & Medicine.

Michael D. Witting, MD, MS, and Mak Moayedi, MD, along with Kathy Dunning (a student at the University of Maryland School of Medicine) and colleagues from MidMichigan Medical Center and Mercy Medical Center, published the article titled “Power Injection Through Ultrasound-Guided IV Lines: Safety and Efficacy Under an Institutional Policy” in the January issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine. Their study demonstrated the safety of an institutional protocol that allows high-speed injection through proximal arm ultrasound-guided IV lines, provided the line is inspected and tested with 10 mL of saline before injection.

Hussain M. Alhashem, MBBS, Carmen Avendano, MD, Bryan D. Hayes, PharmD, and Michael E. Winters, MD, published a case report titled “Persistent Life-Threatening Hemorrhage After Administration of Idarucizumab” in the January issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.