Department Blog

On April 8 and 9, Dr. Amal Mattu was a visiting professor for the emergency medicine residency program at Stanford University in California. During those two very full days, he precepted their journal club in a discussion of recent articles on cardiology, led a legal case discussion, presented a Grand Rounds lecture on "Everyday Leadership," and served as a judge for the program's Research Forum.

Michael Allison, MD, and David Wacker, MD, PhD, will be inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society on May 14. They are being honored with this membership for exemplary humanism in clinical practice and teaching. Dr. Allison and Dr. Wacker are residents in our EM/IM/CCM program.

The 4th Annual Crashing Patient Conference is scheduled for October 15 - 17, 2014. This year promises to be another successful event with new content, new speakers, and hopefully, many new participants. Registration is now open. Visit www.thecrashingpatient.com for more information.

Drs. Mimi Lu, Haney Mallemat, and Amal Mattu were faculty members for Resuscitation 2014, a conference focused on the care of critically ill and injured patients, which was presented in Las Vegas in late March. Dr. Lu presented lectures on emergency pediatric care and co-directed a pediatric emergency bootcamp. Dr Mallemat spoke on criical care issues in emergency medicine and served on the conference coordinating committee, as did Dr. Mattu. Dr. Mattu presented lectures on emergency cardiology, led a 3-hour workshop on advanced dysrhythmias, and co-directed a critcal care bootcamp. More than 400 physicians from various medical speciaities and from several countries attended this year's conference.

Dan Griffith, CPA, Assistant Director of Finance, is a member of the inaugural class of the Leadership Foundations Program of Faculty Physicians, Inc. Participation in the 6-month class is based on an application and acceptance process. The program culminates with the presentation of a group project that describes a new business entity. Congratulations, Dan, on this impressive achievement!

Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, PhD, testified before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce this morning, regarding the national shortage of inpatient psychatric beds and the implications of boarding psychiatric patients in EDs. Dr. Hirshon presented data from the recently published National Report Card on Emergency Care, produced by a task force that he chaired within the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Ali Farzad, MD, has published another interview in his column in Common Sense, the national membership publication of The American Academy of Emergency Medicine. In the current issue, he meets our very own Rob Rogers, MD, at the intersection of traditional academic emergency medicine and revolutionary approaches to teaching, represented by #FOAMed. Their entertaining and provocative exchange can be found here: goo.gl/tpKVjX. Dr. Farzad has published equally engaging interviews with Dr. Amal Mattu (May/June 2012) and Dr. Haney Mallemat (July/August 2013) in this cutting-edge column. The magazine is archived at www.aaem.org/publications/common-sense.

Congratulations to Drs. Sarah Dubbs, Semhar Tewelde, Andi Tenner, and Danya Khoujah for their recent completion of ACEP's Teaching Fellowship. Our emergency medicine program has more graduates of this teachng skills course than any other program in the world. Dr. Amal Mattu, also a graduate of the fellowship, has been a member of its faculty since 2007.

Whitney Cesari, MD, Brad Cotter, MD, and Ben Lawner, DO, presented the evening educational broadcast for EMS providers from the Shock Trauma Center auditorium on March 5. They discussed current treatment protocols and presented an evidence-based approach for common prehospital calls: traumatic brain injury, cardiac dysrhythmia, and respiratory failure. The panel discussion was streamed live, in an interactive format, to 70 prehospital care providers across the state.

Congratulations to Dr. Doug Sward on the publication of his article on wilderness medicine in the current issue of the World Journal of Emergency Medicine. The article provides an overview of the history, areas of practice, and educational opportunities in this specialty area of emergency medicine. Dr. Sward's co-author is Dr. Brad Bennett, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Thier article is available at the journal's website, www.wjem.org.