Smacc

Working night shifts is a part of medicine that we have come to accept. We work these shift because generations of people before us had done it. But could working night shifts have negative consequences? Night shifts have been shown to be detrimental to patient safety by increasing errors in medication administration and direct patient care. Working night shifts may negatively affect our health by increasing the risks of substance abuse, obesity, social relationships, and certain malignancies. Finally, working night shifts may lead to career burnout leading to dissatisfaction and early retirement from the profession. Several strategies can be used to combat the negative effects of working night shifts and these include a better awareness of the problem, improved sleep hygiene, strategies for better rest, and alternative staffing techniques. The Casino shift is an alternative approach to scheduling, which has been found to combat several of the problems associated with night shifts. Night shifts will never dis

Patients are at risk – from the moment they begin their healthcare journey. They are at risk of bad outcomes (as defined by us) and of bad experience (as can only be defined by them) Patient safety experts like James Reason, and groups like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) have prompted us to think about systems and complexity as sources of error – and supported strategies to remove predictable human fallibility as far as possible. This is important to make healthcare safer. Vic Brazil’s talk suggests there is also a human face to patient safety - in the behaviour and attitude of healthcare practitioners and patients themselves...... We think too little of patients. We feel affronted if patient takes a different view of ‘evidence’ or of ‘risk’. …and they think too much of us....! Every day patients allow nurses (and doctors) to inject drugs into their IV line without asking “whats in that syringe”.... This combination of our subconscious paternalism and patients’ blind faith is a heady mix……but

What is the problem?Delivering bad news and having an end of life conversation are core skills for any practitioner who deals with critically ill patients. Current data show that while 22% of deaths in the USA now occur in ICU, 54% of families surveyed have a poor understanding of patient’s diagnosis, treatment plan and prognosis. Dr. Kate Granger found this out first hand while admitted to hospital in the UK and started the #hellomynameis campaign. What is the evidence?While families feel more validated if given longer to speak, doctors speak for 71% of the time in family meetings. -Longer meetings are also associated with greater patient and family member satisfaction. -Patients perceive that doctors spend longer with them if the doctor is sitting down. -Use of a simple mnemonic increases satisfaction and reduced the incidence of PTSD in family members. What do experts do?1. Prepare for the meeting. Decide who will attend, what you will talk about and what your goals are.2. Introduce everyone and explain th

Pain in children is often under treated due to practitioners lacking the knowledge or confidence to be aggressive enough. This is partly due to the lack of structure presented in pain managment and it is frequently made to seem more complex than it is. Almost all acute pain in children can be dealt with by a simple stepwise regime using a small number of common, established and easy to use drugs. Likewise, procedural sedation can be safely and simply performed with simple regimes.

Advances in understanding the cardiopulmonary physiology during CPR, perfusion and reperfusion of the brain, and advancing technologies have made possible directed and customised resuscitation of cardiac arrest. We will present where current CPR fails, and what it may look like in the future.

Phil Hyde vs Greg Kelly - We Should Perform Therapeutic Hypothermia (T32– 34C) for Children After Cardiac Arrest The recent publication of THAPCA-OH filled an important gap in our knowledge. THAPCA does not support cooling children after cardiac arrest which was a common practice until recently in many units. It is illustrative to look at how a practice became routine with no supporting evidence at it raises questions about what questions we ask and how we operate in the absence of good evidence.

Working in a remote hospital often means working without the aid of formal medical imaging or Labs. So does this mean that we must compromise on our patient’s care? No. Bedside Ultrasound has changed the way I diagnose, treat and care for patients in this paradigm.This talk will explore the utility and a practical approach to bedside sonography for range of clinical situations: trauma, fracture management, sepsis diagnosis and resuscitation, Paediatric fever and bowel obstruction – all without X-rays. Ultrasound can allow us to provide faster, more accurate and compassionate care – regardless of where you work.

Preparing your hospital for a disaster Sara Gray Synopsis: This talk will highlight essential components of hospital-based disaster planning. We will discuss tips for planning training exercises, getting funding, and effective debriefing. Preparedness really matters, find out why! Objectives:1.Discuss essential components of a disaster plana.All hazardsb.IMS structures. Should your plan be long or short?2.Talk about training exercisesa.Low fidelity versus high fidelity exercises.Getting funding3.Review why debriefing mattersReferences and Links1.Canada’s national preparedness site, pitched mostly to individuals http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx 2.Ontario’s Emergency Management Office site includes some training tools and resources for organizationshttp://www.emergencymanagementontario.ca/english/home.html 3. The CDC Emergency Preparedness Site http://emergency.cdc.gov/hazards-all.asp 4. FEMA’s site has some good resources for organizations. Also has an interesting text message program about hurrican

Improved patient outcomes as the goal of training. With this philosophy in mind, Bill Hinkley shares his three pillars of training; train yourself, train as a team, train others. Advice from an inspiring educator on how to build a personal learning network, tips on training as a team and how influential passionate educators are to teaching others.

Sonowars continues to find new ways to make Ultrasound teaching exciting, inspirational and most importantly informative. The team of James Rippey, Matt Dawson, Mike Mallin and Andrian Goudie are back with an all-star supporting cast. Keep an eye out for the light sabre, simulating ultrasound guided venous canulation as well as the mechanical bull ultrasound challenge. Things are bound to get a little crazy when these guys get fired up.

The host response to injury is inflammation. The inflammatory response may have been naturally selected over millions of years of evolution to give the injured tissue the best chance of healing and recovering. On the other hand, over the last 50 years animal models of traumatic brain injury (TBI) suggest that fever, occurring as part of the inflammatory response, may be harmful to neuronal recovery. Some observational clinical studies support this. However we lack high quality clinical trials.At present clinicians commonly use drugs and physical cooling techniques to suppress fever after TBI and stroke. These approaches have costs and can be resource intensive, as well as be associated with side-effects. We will share with you some of the results from our program in this area. We will discuss ... What is normothermia? How effective are the interventions we use? What temperature do/should we target? What do we achieve? Surely we need a reliable answer to the question of whether the strict maintenance of normot

The master of Dogmalysis himself, Cliff Reid, challenges current practices in prehospital and emergency medicine. Warning listeners to be skeptical, Cliff dissects the dogma of acute crush injuries and spinal immobilization. He also explores the false dichotomy of “scoop and run vs. stay and play”. Cliff reminds us that “not to challenge current practice is intellectually lazy”.

Making Transitions of Care Safe - Pat Croskerry Summary by: Pat Croskerry It is now well recognized that transferring the care of a patient from one caregiver to another is a vulnerable point in a patient’s care and a potential threat to patient safety. There may be many intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary transition points in the ED during an individual patient’s care. The process requires that each participant communicates well with others to establish an accurate shared mental representation of the important issues. To minimize transition failures, the process should be trained and standardized, recognized as a multi-professional activity, defined by who should be present, where and when it should occur, and have an end-point that is a clear plan for the ongoing care of the patient. The reliability, consistency, and efficacy of the transition should be a hallmark of departmental culture. Training should be provided in how the process works and how it fails. The broad distinction between the transfer

Kevin Fong is an astrophysicist, astronaut and anaesthetist who gives an incredibly entertaining talk about human space exploration and our dreams of a manned mission to MARS. This is a mission that stands on the boundary between science fiction and science fact. A mission that would be a minimum of 1000 days in length and which would be twice as long as any previous manned space mission. Fong focuses on the the incredibly destructive effects of such prolonged weightlessness on the human body. He outlines the somewhat predictable effects of this on the muscles and bones, but surprises us with the changes in vestibular balance, linear acceleronomy, baroreceptor calibration and probably most frighteningly the psychological effects of prolonged isolation in space. Despite considerable work in the area of human adaptation for space and the ongoing development of counter-measures these physiological challenges remain largely unsolved. In essence Fong explains, to overcome the detrimental physiological effects of p

A pair of outrageously high heels next to a pair of tattered combat boots, set the stage for Ashley’s talk on the stress of PHARM. Ashley draws on lessons learned in combat to support her theory of mental health survival. She emphasizes the importance of critical incident recognition, response and elimination of stigma associated with seeking help.

Bouncing Back from the Beach – Cutting to Air to secure an Emergency Surgical Airway Summary by: Thomas Dolven To handle airways means being prepared to handle them all the way. You need to be prepared for a cannot intubate cannot oxygenate CICO scenario. The common, final end point of airway management in a is the emergency surgical airway, the cricothyroidotomy. So how to prepare?Often, it is not being taught right. This is a rare procedure under high stress and time sensitive. And most importantly, it is a bloody procedure that will be blind. You cannot use your eyes. So it needs a simple technique without fine motor skills, and it must be tactile. Your finger is the perfect tool for this task, and will guide you through it. The video of my personal real world experience is backed by available empirical evidence and lab training. There will never be an RCT, this is the best evidence we will have. So read NAPP4 and the case series article on the scalpel-finger-tube technique. Read these available articles,

Tox-Dogmalysis is a talk about evidence in Toxicology. It’s been said that 50% of what we learn is incorrect; we just don’t know which 50%. As the complexity of medicine increases, it is of the utmost importance for clinicians to be skeptical of old data and new data alike. Many in the FOAM community have made huge strides in busting myths that have persisted over time. However, sometimes we may declare myths busted too prematurely based on incomplete or misunderstood data. This talk will explore three topics in toxicology for which the perceived myths may actually be true, or at least not completely busted.

Fluids in Critical Care: Time to SPLIT With Normal Saline? Summary by: Paul Young Intravenous fluid therapy is a ubiquitous treatment for critically ill patients and has been used in clinical practice for over 175 years. Despite this long history, the majority of intravenous fluids have not been subjected to the same level of scrutiny as other drugs. That said, large-scale fluid trials evaluating albumin and starch solutions compared to 0.9% saline have been conducted and their results have changed clinical practice around the world so that crystalloid fluid therapy is now predominant in many parts of the world. While 0.9% saline is the world’s most commonly prescribed crystalloid fluid, increasingly clinicians are turning to buffered or balanced crystalloid solutions as an alternative to 0.9% saline. This practice change from 0.9% saline towards balanced crystalloids is not based on high quality evidence but is supported by observational data suggesting that saline may be associated with an increased risk

Mark Wilson hosts an all-star cast!Summary By: Mark Wilson Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a hugely important topic in critical care. It is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world with hospital presentations totaling over 2million in the US, 1 million in the UK and 700,000 in Australia each year. Not only do they represent a huge proportion of injuries, but they are a unique in their potential to fundamentally change “who a person is”. As critical care and trauma practitioners there are many aspects of management that can change outcomes for patients in the short and long term. Dr Mark Wilson (@MarkHWilson) is a neurosurgeon and doctor for the Air Ambulance in the UK. In this session from SMACC Chicago entitled “It’s a Knockout”, he expertly leads a discussion which holds a magnifying glass to the current practice guidelines for managing TBI as taught in ATLS.  On the discussion panel is a star-studded international cast including: Pierre Janin, Andrew Dixon (@DrAndrewDixon), Karim

Summary by: Paul Young The febrile response to infection occurs in most animals and is regulated by a common biochemical mechanism involving prostaglandin E2. This common mechanism suggests that the response may have evolved in a common ancestor more than 350 million years ago. As the febrile response comes at a significant metabolic cost, its persistence across a broad range of species provides circumstantial evidence that the response has some evolutionary advantage. Furthermore, it logically follows that the components of the immune system would have evolved to function optimally in the physiological febrile range. There are a number of historical examples of dramatic responses to treatment with therapeutic hyperthermia in some infectious diseases, including neurosyphilis and malaria. The relevance of these historical examples to the modern era is unclear. Furthermore, arguments based on the evolutionary importance of the febrile response do not necessarily apply to critically ill patients who are, by