Emergency Medicine featured stories
Emergency Medicine Resident videos
Critical Conditions
“On an early Monday morning in March 2018, James Waymack, MD, was on his way to work at Taylorville Memorial Hospital. Waymack is the director of the emergency medicine residency program within SIU’s Department of Emergency Medicine, and on Mondays he accompanies a team of residents on a rural service rotation to a hospital 30 minutes east of Springfield. Nearing his exit, he was suddenly passed by three ambulances. Approaching the hospital, he found the parking lot teeming with police vehicles."
#ThisIsOurLane
“Injury prevention of any kind is well without our scope, and we should be leading the charge to study ways in which we can improve the lives of those within our community. The beauty of this being in our lane is that more than advocacy groups on either side of the debate, we are well equipped to provide unbiased interpretations of objective data that can potentially save lives. The alternative is to continue to sit idly by, treating a growing number of increasingly devastating injuries and mourning alongside families, wishing we could’ve done more. This is our lane.”
Planting the Seed: Using Trauma-informed Care
“Health care professionals enter their professions with the goal of helping people achieve better health. In the case of survivors of violence, the “goal” of having the patient leave a violent situation may not be feasible at that moment. What we can achieve through trauma-informed care is to plant the seed that no one deserves abuse and that help is available when the person is ready. Changes in institutional culture and changes in practice revolve around each other in a complex dance."
Aspects of a Learner - Tyler Fulks, MD
“I was drawn to the exciting, fast paced style of practice that occurs in the emergency department. It works well with my short attention span. IN med school I began to better appreciate the wide breadth of knowledge emergency physicians must have in practice. I can remember one of my mentors explaining that in emergency medicine we are not only resuscitationists, but it is our duty to know how to manage the first 30 minutes of every specialty in medicine.”