#FOAMed

In a rather strange co-incidence two articles landed on my desk this soggy Sunday morning. Firstly we have an RCT of intra-arrest therapeutic hypothermia published in Intensive Care Medicine.

We see lots of kids presenting to the ED with "things" where they shouldn't be (we see adults too, sometimes - but that's a whole set of different stories). Foreign bodies show up in all sorts of forms in all sorts of places, typically in the preschool and early school age kids who display a potentially deadly combination of curiosity and dexterity with a magpie-like obsession; they just can't keep away from shiny things.

It's fair to say we quite like a guideline here at St Emlyn's. We have, probably like your ED, evidence-based clinical decision support guidelines for common (think cardiac chest pain and ?PE) and not so common (think porphyria) conditions with the intention of speeding decision-making, delivering safer care and reducing waste on unnecessary admissions and tests.

I was a little miffed about this and learned several lessons that day (notably - always record your images!).

Emergency Medicine is an emerging specialty the world over and we at St Emlyns wholeheartedly support the fantastic Developing EM conference and its aims. Teaching and learning collaboratively across geographical borders is a challenge; teaching and learning across huge resource disparity is an even bigger one.

1. Acad Emerg Med.