Top Stories: June & July 2021
Join us in exploring news, challenges, and COVID updates from around the world.
International Federation for Emergency Medicine
“In view of the COVID-19 pandemics, the newly built North Lantau Hospital Hong Kong Infection Control Centre (HKICC), which is right next to the HK International Airport, has started admission of COVID-19 ambulatory patients with mild to moderate clinical conditions. There are six two-story ward buildings with a total of 816 negative-pressure isolation beds in the Centre.”
EM Coach: Getting on my nerves
Emergency Physicians Monthly
“A 72-year-old woman tripped and fell on an outstretched arm, sustaining the fracture depicted in the X-ray below.”
EM Resident
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have focused our efforts on protecting our patients, our loved ones, and ourselves. We relinquished the connectedness that had once rejuvenated our ethos for emergency medicine. Social creatures by nature, emergency physicians crave opportunities to share narratives and create meaning from work collectively. Some of us have successfully navigated separation from family and friends by identifying creative ways to maintain connectedness while adhering to social distancing requirements. How then can we practically and sustainably maintain our sanity during times of uncertainty?”
Facilitating the development of emergency nursing in Africa: Operational challenges and successes
African Journal of Emergency Medicine via Science Direct
“The World Health Assembly declared 2020 as the ‘Year of the Nurse and the Midwife’ in recognition of the critical contribution of both professions to global health. Nurses globally are having to do more with less and in the already resource deficient African context, significant adaptation and leadership is required in the way emergency nurses work if they are to be effective in reducing mortality and morbidity within emergency populations.”
YEMD SURVEY ON EUSEM ENDORSED EM CURRICULUM
European Society for Emergency Medicine
“This survey is addressed to all Emergency Medicine (EM) trainees undergoing a residency program in a European country (EU, UK and Turkey). The aim of this survey is to identify areas in which EUSEM could encourage improvement, according to the EM curriculum. It therefore asks what your current educational opportunities are, as well as asking you what you think would be beneficial for further development of the EUSEM endorsed EM curriculum.”
A Covid Test as Easy as Breathing
The New York Times
“Scientists have been dreaming of disease-detecting breathalyzers for years. Has the time for the technology finally come?”
Guillain–Barré Syndrome Associated with SARS-CoV-2
The New England Journal of Medicine
“From February 28 through March 21, 2020, in three hospitals in northern Italy, we examined five patients who had Guillain–Barré syndrome after the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). During that period, an estimated 1000 to 1200 patients with Covid-19 were admitted to these hospitals. Four of the patients in this series had a positive nasopharyngeal swab for SARS-CoV-2 at the onset of the neurologic syndrome, and one had a negative nasopharyngeal swab and negative bronchoalveolar lavage but subsequently had a positive serologic test for the virus.”
Challenging Providers To Look Within Themselves: A New Tool To Reduce Bias In Maternity Care
Health Affairs
“It is abundantly clear from research studies, surveys of patients, and personal stories that implicit bias and racism in the health care system contribute significantly to widely disparate outcomes, notably in maternity care for Black birthing people.* There is much less clarity, however, around how health care providers and institutions can fix something they may not even see or know how to address.”
