Cools ideas for an EM club?

[paramed2premed]

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First year at Albany, trying to think of activities for the EMIG here. I've read the EMRA site (joined!), but I was wondering if anyone had any other ideas, unconventional ones.

I was thinking of a very casual, non-AHA approved "Intro to ACLS." Have people playing with the defib 🙂eek: ), intubating, CPR, shouting clear. Unleashing their inner Johnny Gage. I am actually an ACLS instructor, but that level of instruction can wait. Just do the fun stuff first.

Ideas?

 

[DrQuinn]

One thing we did when I was Veep of our EM interest club, was to have afternoon labs where we learned to splint, intubate, etc. Lots of fun, and a good turnout.

Q, DO

 

[FoughtFyr]

Teach a one day (or better yet the three day) NHSTA child car safety seat technician assistant (or technician if 3 day) course. You could join with the PEDS interest group, get a cert. (good for the CV), and actually do something in terms of primary injury prevention (where, IMHO, ER physicains do not spend enough time). At least one program I know of (U of Chicago) has a car safety seat program out of their ER. See the NHSTA website for how-to's

- H

 

[FoughtFyr]

Originally posted by paramed2premed
Unleashing their inner Johnny Gage.

Showing your age...

(Me too!)

http://www.emergencyfans.com/people/julie_london/london-tribute.htm

- H

 

[DrQuinn]

Flawless Victory.

Q, DO

 

[anonymousEM]

We had an afternoon where we taught first aid to high school kids. Another lab we had was airways complete with pig tracheas and bronchoscopes. We did an ultrasound lab too and took turns doing FAST exams and such on each other. Oh, and take a group trip to SAEM's annual Scientific Assembly. There's a day with activities dedicated to medical students looking to pursue Emergency Medicine.

 

[DrQuinn]

Practice pelvic exams.

Q, DO

 

[OB1🤙]

Things our EMIG and local Life Support Center do...

Teach BLS in public schools (after getting instructor cert)
Peds Trauma Prevention (car seat checks & installs)
IV & Intubation Clinic (on real pts)
ER observation
Aeromed flight ride-alongs (although we're having probs with it this year)
Ambulance ride-alongs (good for the non-EMT/paramedics)
More ER observation (see one, do one, teach one)

 

[EMRaiden]

Originally posted by QuinnNSU
Practice pelvic exams.

Q, DO

On hookers...

with wooden legs...

 

[EMRaiden]

Suture lab
Casting Lab
IV Lab

Any sort of scut work you can learn now will pay off later.

Before you start 3rd year a good review (or even a full) ACLS will pay off; you could also look into a mini-ATLS course-- go over the basic concepts, the flow of a trauma resuscitation.

Even non-medical things like powerpoint (for all your grand rounds presentations), money management, would be very useful to many people.

 

[paramed2premed]

Some great ideas out there. I hadn't even thought of the prevention angle.

Can I get pig tracheas from the butcher? (Yum, the thought of chipotle carina, on a bed of fresh alveoli!)

We tried pelvic exams. It was kinda painful, though, so we resolved to get some females into the club 😉 .

 

[Dr JPH]

Originally posted by paramed2premed


We tried pelvic exams. It was kinda painful, though, so we resolved to get some females into the club 😉 .

Haha.

Awesome.

 

[OB1🤙]

I just remembered another fun one we do- teach FBAO to workers in restaurants. Very useful for them, and you get free food!

 

[Vince]

I was president of our EM Club at our school and here's some ideas, most of which were very successful. The EM Club had the largest turnouts of any other club.

EKG Workshop(ours was 6 days, each during lunch, and right before the 2nd years took Cardiology)...huge turnout

I.O. Workshop

Suture Workshop - joint venture with Surgery Club(helps curtail costs)

Intubation Workshop

Journal Presentations

Guest Lectures in EM, we had a great lecture from a current EM resident about what its like applying to programs and how to get an EM residency. Another guest speaker talked about Peds EM.

I highly suggest telling your members about SAEM and going to the medical student forum. I went and it was outstanding.

We also have an Observation program where you can go shadow ER docs in local ER's.

Ambulance Ride-alongs have been done in the past and are usually successful.

I think a combination of informative lectures on the specialty of EM itself, topics useful for ER electives or clinical years in general, and hands-on activities work very well for EM Clubs/EMIGs.

There was an article I read(unfortunately I don't remember which month/year) that was in the Annals of Emergency Medicine which talked about a 2 week long course that was actually part of a school's curriculum which taught concepts/procedures necessary for EM electives that had some very good ideas. The nice thing is that these concepts/procedures would be useful in many other electives. Do a search on it through medline and you'll find it.

Good luck.

 

[paramed2premed]

Bump.

 

[anonymousEM]

as far as keeping costs down, use your friendly product reps.

3M for casting gave us anything we wanted basically and once even flew in people to run the workshop (make sure it's well attended or they won't be so kind about helping next time)

Ethicon (Johnson&Johnson) for suturing and if you're lucky Dermabond

there's other suppliers too, see who your ED works with

 

[paramed2premed]

Originally posted by anonymousEM
as far as keeping costs down, use your friendly product reps.

Good place to start a discussion about the ethics of providing a forum for salespeople within a school.

How about having Wyeth (amiodarone) sponsor the ACLS skills class? Or having Pfizer sponsor the ID class? Philip Morris would be happy to endow a chair, I'm sure.

There are darn good reasons that companies are willing to fly in reps, and it has nothing to do with a sense of societal obligation. If these activities didn't improve their bottom line, they wouldn't do them.

Ok, I'm a bit of a crusader. Just think about it a little, though.