Coda Change

Ross Fisher gives his take on how to make your presentations better! Delivering a presentation is a skill like any other, yet few people are actually develop this skill. Instead, they merely copy those they observe and reach the same level of mediocrity. There is more to a presentation than your slides. Ross gives his three main elements of any presentation: The story, the media, and the delivery....

Suman Biswas is an anaesthetist from London, however probably more famous for his satirical song writing career, gives a poignant talk about communication. Suman provides his ideas about talking and communicating with patients. As everyone knows, anaesthetists do not need to talk to their patients! Quite the contrary, as Suman divulges they indeed do. They need to establish rapport, gain trust and...

Jenny Beck-Esmay, Dara Kass and Stacey Poznanski tell the story of FemInEM and celebrate women in Emergency Medicine. Jenny shares the story of Casey Drawert, a doctor who was tragically shot to death by her husband. This incident opened the discussion regarding how common domestic violence in physician relationships is. In response to this incident, Esther Choo wrote "Intimate partner violence, a...

Sandra Viggers delves into the art of learning medicine. Sandra asks the question: can students choreograph their own education? On one hand, people believe students cannot choreograph their own education for various reasons. She calls such people behaviourists who push others back in line if they do not agree with their views. Behaviourism is a top to bottom approach. The teacher is not a facilit...

Tom Evans wants to bring lessons from elite sport development and training to medical education. Caring for the critically unwell is an important and difficult task. So, preparing our people to meet this challenge should be all about excellence. These are all true of sport – and Tom contends perhaps medical training! Nothing happens quickly in sport. It takes time, often many years. There are a nu...

This will be a panel discussion with a focus on the different styles of training and education in prehospital care.

Ross Hofmeyr divulges some stories from his experience of wilderness and expedition medicine. In his words, wilderness and expedition medicine is the epitome of practical, pragmatic, minimalist and thoughtful care. Austere and extreme environments require special knowledge, critical thinking, innovative practice, and sometimes cunning improvisation. Moreover, diagnosis in the wilderness relies hea...

Kathleen Thomas describes her harrowing experience of a warzone whilst working in the ICU and ED of the Médecins Sans Frontières run Kunduz Trauma Centre (KTC) in northern Afghanistan. Kathleen describes her work during a week where she found herself caught up in an eruption of war. The Taliban forcibly took control of Kunduz from the US backed Afghan Military. This marked the beginning of a chall...

Trish Henwood talks on all things point of care ultrasound (POCUS) in resource limited environments. According to the World Health Organisation, 80-90% of all diagnostic problems can be solved by basic radiograph (x-ray) and ultrasound (US) examinations. However, the problem is that two-thirds of the world's population currently has no access to imaging technologies. From refugee camps in Greece,...

David Carr teaches you how not to miss the diagnosis of aortic dissection. David breaks down the key pearls on history and physical exam that guide you into correctly suspecting a dissection. Aortic dissection is a challenging diagnosis that you cannot afford to miss. The talk aims to give you the framework to avoid missing the diagnosis. Firstly, David begins by teaching you what questions to ask...

Gareth Grier discusses who should be intubated following severe trauma pre-hospital.

This talk will look at current and previous pre oxygenation practices and some of the current research. It will also discuss the notion of commitment to evolution of practice, the breakdown of cognitive biases and how to move forward with adequate self reflected practice.

Peter Brindley explains why teamwork is the strongest drug in the hospital. Modern acute care medicine is eye-wateringly complex and potentially dangerous. It really can't be delivered safely without deliberately addressing our teamwork (in both acute and chronic situations). Unfortunately, historically, human factors were commonly left to chance, and recently have been threatened by decerebrate c...

Richard will cover the rationale and evidence for prehospital blood product transfusion in trauma, look at the available current and future options, suggest best clinical practice and highlight areas of future research.

William Knight presents the considerations in the management of extra-cranial injuries in patients with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Patients with TBI often have concomitant systemic injuries that complicate the management of the TBI. In this talk William presents his five top areas to think about – prognostication, suitability for the operating room, use of ventilators, pressure considerations...

Kieran Henry gives his insights into hospital handovers of major trauma. He makes the comparison between prehospital care and the life lived in a Western movie. Kieran stresses that he does not want you to behave like a cowboy, jumping off your horse (ambulance) as it is still moving into town, without much dialogue and with no one really knowing what is happening. Instead, be the preacher man! Be...

Jo Anna Leuck discusses how to learn from error in paediatric sepsis. Rory was a healthy 12-year-old boy, known for his smile and for standing up for others. A simple fall during basketball practice caused an abrasion on his arm. This is the suspected beginning of a cascade of events that led to his death from sepsis. Rory was seen by both his paediatrician and a local Emergency Department and was...

Simon Finfer explains the future of sepsis treatment focusing on life after surviving sepsis. Sepsis is the life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to an infection damages its own tissues and organs. It can lead to shock, failure of multiple organs, and death. Organ failure and death are more likely if sepsis is not recognised early and not treated promptly. Sepsis is the l...

Alistair Nichol explains the use of hypothermia in the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI is a major cause of mortality and long-term morbidity. It leads to terrible outcomes and is a major cause of health burden across the globe. Prophylactic hypothermia presents a promising treatment to address this hidden epidemic. The pathophysiology of TBI is exceedingly complex. Evidently, one dr...

Ryan Radecki urges you to rethink the acute management of stroke. The current way of thinking about stroke and the acute treatment has been around for decades. In this time, a lot has changed, new technologies have been developed and we have learnt a lot about the underlying physiology of stroke. Endovascular therapy, CT perfusion, and patient-level predictive modelling are now all at the disposal...

In this entertaining talk, Ronan O'Leary discusses conflict in critical care. Ronan explains how to make a team decision about whether or not to perform a decompressive craniectomy. Undertaking a decompressive craniectomy is perhaps one of the most challenging decisions we face within critical care. Ronan contends that we do not know if we should do the operation. As he explains, even if we think...

Martin Smith persuades you that controversies in brain death should not, and do not, exist. Almost fifty years since the concept of brain death was first introduced, some individuals and whole nations still struggle with its concept and justification. Many controversies continue to surround brain death, although there is broad consensus that human death is ultimately death of the brain. Martin pro...

Hazel Talbot gives her insights from working in neonatal and paediatric retrieval. She delivers her talk with all the passion and dedication that she brings to her work as a neonatal and paediatric transport consultant. Equipment failure, rapidly deteriorating children and miscommunication are all common challenges that Hazel and her team encounter in their line of work. This is on top of the chal...

Simon Finfer argues that the transfusion threshold should be 70 g/L. Simon first raises the Choosing Wisely Guidelines for Critical Care. These state that one should not transfuse red blood cells in haemodynamically stable patients with a haemoglobin concentration of greater than 70g/L. He continues to discuss the application of this specifically to patients with an acute brain injury. In doing so...

Myths persist because they are essential to the human experience and our development as a society. They fill the gap between what we know and what we think we know. Where does this gap hurt us the most? In our vulnerable populations, for example, in our care of children. The "myth incarnate" in medicine: defective dogma. Not all dogma is bad – after all, dogma means "that which is believed univers...