Podcast – The St Emlyn’s Podcast – An Introduction

Welcome to the St Emlyn’s podcast. I’m Iain Beardsell and I’m Simon Carley, and we’re emergency physicians working in the UK. We’re just a small part of the team that’s been bringing you the St Emlyn’s blog for the last few years, but we thought it was about time we dipped our toes into the world of podcasting.

We know there’s a lot of podcasts out there already, but we don’t have much in the way of a UK perspective for the FOAMed world. So, we want to discuss a whole range of topics that’s going to be interesting whether you’re new to emergency medicine, whether you’ve been doing this for ages, or if you’re just interested in what we do. We’re going to start with our first podcast by explaining a little bit about what we aim to give you over the coming broadcasts, how we’re going to do that, and some of the topics we’re going to be discussing.

The whole idea of FOAMed is relatively new to us all. Simon, you’ve been doing this a while. Tell us a little bit about what FOAMed is, what it means, and the philosophy behind the work that everybody’s doing around the world.

FOAMed is free open-access medical education, and it’s something that we truly believe in. We, as educators, just want to share what we do, what we learn, and what we teach. If we can do that to the biggest audience possible, that’s fantastic. So, FOAMed is about sharing. The key word is it’s a philosophy. Some people think it’s just a label that if you make something freely available on the internet, it’s FOAMed. Maybe, but to me, it’s about that philosophy that we can all learn from each other and that the more we share, the better we can improve patient care wherever you are in the world.

What do you think we’re going to do, Simon, as part of St Emlyn’s? We’ve already got loads of podcasts. I listen to them all the time on my way to work, when I’m walking the dog, and occasionally if I accidentally stumble towards a gym. What are we going to do that’s different from the likes of M. Crit and all the other great podcasts out there?

Podcasts like EMCrit and Scott Weingart’s work got me going in this. We do need a UK perspective because the world is slightly different over here and we do different things. At St Emlyn’s, what’s our USP? We do a lot of stuff around evidence-based medicine, journal appraisal, and we’ll do a bit of that on the podcast. But I think we’re still rooted as clinicians. We don’t want to be perceived as academics. We do clinical medicine in our EDs and we still talk about what we do there. We both work in pretty hardcore emergency departments which are a bit of a struggle to work in sometimes, so we can do quite a bit around management and how you work day to day on the shop floor in a busy, high-intensity, high-risk emergency department.

We’ve all seen the press articles recently about how difficult it is for emergency medicine in the UK at the moment. I think that’s worldwide. Please don’t think that we work in departments where everything is rosy and all is well. I enjoy my work, but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard at times. We’ll talk about how you deal with when there are 12 patients queuing, not enough trolleys, no beds, and the issue of access block, which I thought was unique to the southern hemisphere but isn’t anymore.

Yes, departmental constipation. There’s just no outflow at the bottom end; everything gets bunged up, and everybody gets really upset. And we’re still all searching for the laxative. Well, I’m sure Jeremy Hunt will help get some of that flowing, or let’s hope so anyway.

We will talk a little bit about clinical topics, management topics. Simon says we’re not academic, and that’s true. I’m not an academic, but Professor Carley has an air of academia about him. So please rest assured that we will have some people who know what they’re talking about; it won’t just be me. We are very lucky to have some very clever friends and well-renowned clinicians amongst us who will be coming onto the podcast as guests. They don’t know it yet, but soon we’ll be contacting them. If they don’t want to join us, we’ll name and shame them on the podcast, and they’ll no longer be invited to the SMACC conference.

We will surround ourselves with people who are cleverer than us. That’s what being a good manager is all about, and we really hope that you’ll enjoy listening to what we have to say. We’re going to try and bring out a podcast on a regular basis. There should be something coming into your iTunes inbox or podcast feeder at regular intervals, and we hope to provide a decent variation in our discussions.

Simon, any ideas about how we’re going to start and what the first few episodes will be about?

The first few episodes will focus on diagnosis. We did quite a bit of this in SMACC Sydney, but as clinicians in emergency departments, diagnosis is what we do. Most of the time, we just get away with it, but we don’t really understand what’s going on. If you want to be a great emergency physician, you need to understand what diagnostic tests work, why they work, and why sometimes you’re lucky. We’ll do some work around that in the early stages.

Please remember that if you’re coming to this and you’ve never met us before, we are both incredibly good-looking, tall, dark, handsome young men. That’s what we want you to think about when you hear our voices. Should you ever meet us, you might be slightly surprised and disappointed, but we hope not to disappoint you while we’re talking. This kind of explains why we’re not doing this on video. We have faces for radio, without a doubt.

We’re looking forward to speaking to you some more. We’re both very excited, you can tell that we’re excitable young men, and we can’t wait to tell you more about what’s going to be happening.