SIG on Emergency Medicine annual report
Dr Victor Ng, (Canada), convenor, WONCA SIG Emergency Medicine writes:
Since the conception of our Special Interest Group (SIG) on Emergency Medicine (EM) in 2016, the number of members of the SIG has grown significantly. We have over 75 members who have indicated an interest to help with our work to advance the clinical domain of emergency medicine within the discipline of family medicine. One key area of work is ensuring that we have strong workshops at WONCA conferences.
In WONCA Europe, Dr Elena Klusova and her colleagues at Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (SemFYC) have been working diligently to offer workshops. At both WONCA Europe conferences in Prague (2017) and Krakow (2018), we held emergency medicine workshops. Topics presented have included toxicology, basic and advanced life support, palliative care in the emergency department and the emergency gymkhana which is a popular multi-station learning activity first pioneered in Spain.
Recently at the WONCA Rural conference in New Delhi, Dr Nisanth Menon from India, along with his colleagues, delivered a set of Rectify workshops. These interactive workshops are designed to teach basic emergency skills to family doctors from a rural and resource constrained perspective. These sessions were well attended and very well received. We are looking to Dr Menon’s leadership as we scale up these sessions for the upcoming WONCA world conference in Seoul.
From an advocacy perspective, our SIG on emergency medicine has been working with the WONCA leadership and the SIG on Conflict and Catastrophe medicine, on how to best assist family doctors in responding to disasters. We have engaged with key stakeholders from around the world including the World Health Organization and the World Association of Disaster and Emergency Medicine to plan next steps. We look forward to ensuring that the family medicine voice is included in both the planning of the disaster response and also during acute and sub-acute disaster events.
Below are a few examples of the great work of our WONCA SIG EM members in various WONCA regions. While this is far from an exhaustive list, it shows the commitment of our members to promote acute and emergency medicine to the rest of our family medicine colleagues. We appreciate and are thankful for their service to our discipline.
Individual Member Highlights
Dr Will Leung (Hong Kong) – Topic: Shortness of Breath (Hong Kong Primary Care Conference, June 2018)
Dr Pramendra Prasad (Nepal) – Topic: Disaster and Rural EM (First National Emergency Medicine conference, Kochi, 2018)
Dr Elena Klusova (Spain) – Topic Toxicology of Recreational Drugs (VdGM Forum, Porto, 2018)
Dr Ayose Perez Miranda (Spain) and SemFyC colleagues - Atlas gráfico de Urgencias Manual launched in 2017.
Dr Eleni Politi (Greece) – Published “Proposing a three-dimensional, holistic approach to lead the assessment of CPD needs” (Education for Primary Care, 2018)
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