Article by Dr Judi Galea
Welcome to DevelopingEM and our new blog!
DevelopingEM is an independent, not for profit organisation which aims to provide an innovative conference experience for senior critical care clinicians.
Guided by Dr’s Lee Fineberg and Mark Newcombe; two Emergency Physicians based in Australia; our focus is to improve medical education for experienced clinicians who are looking to share ideas, refine their practical skills and explore new technologies.
We aim to collaborate globally, sharing our knowledge with resource poor countries who are striving to progress Emergency Medicine as a speciality.
We have no pharmaceutical or medical sponsorship which gives us the freedom and flexibility to tailor content according to the needs of our delegates.
We like to use interactive workshops, simulation, discussion groups and excursions to encourage both an immersive and enjoyable experience.
To date we have hosted two conferences; in Sydney Australia and Havana Cuba.
The success of these has been overwhelmingly positive, both in terms of the feedback from our attendees and through our ability to sponsor resource poor delegates to attend.
These are designed to be ‘conferences with a conscience,’ and we have another one to look forward to this year, in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil from 8-12th September.
To extend our reach further, we will be distributing a range of audio and video podcasts on a weekly basis through this blog.
We aim to share presentations and discussions from our conferences, research of interest and integrate these with the wealth of resources available from our valued supporters, such as ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, and the Intensive Care Network.
And on that note, I’d like to introduce the first audio podcast from the Havana conference. This is ‘A Skeptics Guide to Medical Literature’ presented by Dr Joe Lex.
https://soundcloud.com/user302035623/developingem-2013-joe-lex-a
Dr Joe Lex has been working in Emergency Medicine for over 40 years. He is passionate about medical education for which he has been awarded many accolades.
He has his own website which hosts literally thousands of free talks, many of which have been recorded from national and international conferences.
Please check this website out on: http://freeemergencytalks.net/.
He has also produced his own podcast with these talks which is available for free from itunes and is named POTW.
In this talk, Joe encourages us to embrace new technologies, such as twitter and crowd sourcing to engage us in new research, and to become actively involved in peer review through this means.
And he introduces and explains to us some very important concepts that we all need to be very aware of when interpreting the medical research we read.
You can find the more complete transcript that accompanies the talk here.