Coda Change

Learn how to reinvigorate yourself after nights, a period of downtime, or when you are recovering from compassion fatigue or post critical care exhaustion - Reflection is Key

What can Prehospital and Retrieval Medicine teach us about life? Natalie May reflects on lessons learned at Sydney HEMS - from the practical to the philosophical.

Many critical care practitioners, like workers in other industries, sleep less than recommended amounts, in what is truly an epidemic of poor sleep in our modern industrialised society. The effects of sleep deprivation are serious and visible across all levels of our community. The actual proportion of people who can live on insufficient sleep is extremely low and the first step towards improvement is to recognise when our sleep tank is running on empty. Simple changes in daily habits based on optimizing sleep hygiene can lead to improved wellbeing and are highly likely to lead to profound improvements in physical, mental and emotional health and performance. Sleep quality may well be more important than sleep quantity. Shift work and the scheduling of multiple consecutive daily shifts are a serious impediment and must be considered carefully by our institutional managers. Taking naps is another seemingly simple but logistically challenging method to improve overall sleep. The bravado that sleep is not important needs to be carefully redirected in our hospitals as the health and performance improvements of practitioners seem likely to lead to greater work satisfaction, less burnout, improved teamwork and ultimately improved patient outcomes. Of course if most of us need more sleep, and will benefit from doing so, just imagine what might happen if our patients could get more sleep.

According to the WHO, there are more than 400,000 homicides globally each year, with millions more suffering from non-fatal injuries. Our hospitals and emergency departments care for many of these patients; however, many return with repeat injuries or are killed within 5 years. In order to reduce intentional violence, it is necessary to discuss and understand its root causes. Dr. Gore’s talk will touch on some of the root causes of violence and further discuss the program he founded called KAVI, a hospital,school and community based intervention as a way of both improving recidivism as it relates to violent trauma and decreasing the incidence of intentional violence overall.

Oli Flower presents at the Get Creative workshop on how to communicate with graphics. We all use images to get our messages across - how can we do this more effectively? He talks about understanding your target audience, techniques for brain storming, and the importance of getting criticised.

Evidence based medicine holds RCT's, randomised Control Trials, as the highest level of evidence but they are often poorly constructed and misinterpreted. This talk by world renowned clinical researcher Professor Simon Finfer analyses the common mistakes and failings of RCT's and describes way that we can do better.

Emergency Medicine operates early in the course of disease when uncertainty is high and information light. We need to do things that help us cognitively offload in the care of critically ill patients.In how many specialties would you be expected to acutely manage (and possibly resuscitate) anyone who comes to you for care‚ young or old, surgical or medical, sick or not sick with limited time and information. We are constantly having to think outside the box.Consider these 4 topics when thinking outside of the box: Bougie 1st Intubation, Mechanical CPR in OHCA, HD-Guided Epinephrine Drips in OHCA, and Stroke Ambulances.What side of the discussion do you fall on in these controversial areas?

Episode 3 follows the trauma patient into the ICU and focuses on the management of Septicaemia, Antibiotics, Steroids for sepsis and how gender inequality within medicine can adversely effect patient outcomes.

Presenting the best literature on resuscitation published 2018 including Paramedic 2, Airways 2, CAM, A rapid fire review critically analysing the hottest papers published during 2018. A fantastic overview of all things resuscitation.

Cognitive bias and risk management are vital understandings to high performance teams in medicine . My extreme sports seem like extreme risk to many people but I have survived 20 years in these disciplines following risk management strategies learned in critical care medical environments. I am interested in the role cognitive biases play in every day and critical decision pathways. In particular I am interested in the Affect Heuristic. My talk borrows from my extreme sport and critical care experience to highlight the role that fear plays in every decision we make and how we can lessen the emotional bias of the Affect Heuristic. It will be a fun and visually spectacular presentation.