We’re back again for the last day of the RCEM annual scientific conference. It’s been a great few days with a variety of themes to learn about.
If you want to relive the previous days, you can check out the summaries of day 1 and day 2 in the linked blogs, so please go back and do that!
Moving forward, here’s day 3.
We started with some heavy duty research in the form of Jonathan Benger presenting findings from AIRWAYS-2, and Tom Quinn with PARAMEDIC2.
It was really interesting to hear Jonathan and Tom discuss the processes behind study design, protocol, and implementation, and pick out some particular results to explain in further detail. It’s clear that both researchers have a huge passion for their work.
For Jonathan, the bottom line from AIRWAYS-2 was that basic life support and defibrillation should be the main focus during resuscitation efforts both in and out of hospital. Advanced airway management is not a priority, but if it becomes one, then you should use the device you are most familiar with. Intubation is not a “must-do”.
Tom asserted that there was still a long way to go in changing practice around adrenaline use in cardiac arrest. When asked the age-old question about whether he would want adrenaline if he were to arrest on stage, he answered that knowing what he knows about adrenaline, he didn’t think he would want it, though he would love to be enrolled in an RCT!
We’ve already reviewed both trials here at St Emlyn’s so you can read about our views on AIRWAYS-2 and PARAMEDIC2 in the linked blog posts.
After the break, over in the RCEMLearning stream, Rebecca Maxwell and Chris Connolly recorded a live podcast on ureteric colic. It was great to see this being done on stage, and the podcast will be published online in the near future so watch out for that. They took us through the process, from idea generation, to drafting the show notes, recording the podcast, and then discussed how it was edited into the final product.
Their main tips for anyone who wants to create content through podcasts are to ensure you have a message, and a reason for doing it – what do you want to get out of it and what do you want others to get out of it. It’s also crucial to have a supportive environment and a friend to talk to (it’s difficult to make a podcast interesting with just one person talking). You don’t need any fancy equipment, just a microphone and a cup of tea.
Mark Winstanley is one of the digital education fellows with RCEMLearning, and spoke really well on his time in the fellowship and what he’s been up to. He was exceptionally encouraging for more people to get involved with content creation as there has been a huge paradigm shift in recent years towards the use of FOAMed for learning to fulfil curriculum needs.
The GMC have instructed the college to revise their curriculum, and Russell Duncan from the curriculum team took us through what’s changing. The main focus in the new version will be around less prescriptive work-place based assessments, and more taking advantage of the everyday learning conversations we have on the shop floor. The aim is to make it easier to record these in order to demonstrate improvement in the various specialty learning outcomes across the course of training.
There is still a lot of work to do, and in particular questions around training supervisors on the new curriculum, adopting the new curriculum mid-training, how it will affect those on the CESR pathway, and how the examination process will change still need to be answered. The RCEM curriculum website has a good amount of information and is a good starting point, but development is still ongoing and is scheduled to be submitted to the GMC early next year, with implementation in 2021.
We’ve eagerly awaited the results of the TIRED study, and it was great to hear these from Laura Cottey in the last session of the day. You can read more about the study itself on the RCEMLearning blogpost written by Laura, and this will help you to understand the background and evidence behind the study. The need for recovery score (NFRS) is a validated tool that assesses a perceived need to recover from the physical and psychological stresses of the working day. It’s on a scale from 0-100, and the higher the number the greater the need for recovery. From the linked post you can see the highest recorded baseline score is 55 (in Iranian miners). The baseline score for ED doctors?
73
Wow.
This rises even higher in those with poor access to requesting and taking the annual and study leave that they want, and the results also show that age and seniority appear to be protective, possibly due to less out of hours work when you hit consultancy.
Laura’s main messages as a result of the study were to go back to your trusts, and ensure that you have good access to taking the right amount of leave. She also highlighted the possibility for trusts to continue to use the NFRS to monitor progress in the future. We’ll certainly have a blog on the full results when they are published.
Well that’s all from us here at St Emlyn’s. We had a fantastic time in Gateshead at the 2019 Annual Scientific Conference, so thank you to the organisers, speakers, and the rest of the team for a great few days.
The dates have been published for the next two years of RCEM conferences as well, so get those in your diary:
- CPD Conference – Bournemouth – 24-25th March 2020
- Scientific Conference – Manchester – 12-14th October 2020
See you all then!
vb
Chris
@cgraydoc
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