Annual EMSC Grantee Meeting

National Association of EMS Physicians Update

June 20 – 22, 2006

KATHLEEN BROWN: Okay, so now, on to NAEMSP update, so NAESMP is a National Association of EMS Physicians. Our biggest interaction with the EMSC for the last couple of years has been our pediatric free hospital research workshop. This is a contract we have with the EMSC. I am the PI for that and Dr. Lynn White and Brooke Lerner are part of the steering committee and have been instrumental in planning that workshop.

This year, we are happy to say we got many more applications than we had spots. So, over the last two years, that workshop has really caught on and people are interested. We actually had to use a little paragraph that we ask people to write to help us choose who would be able to attend the workshop. We had money for 20 funded spots and five people who did not get the funding opted to come and pay their own way so we were very happy to see that.

The workshop faculty are listed; it’s again a mix of pediatric emergency physicians, emergency physicians who are EMS providers, and other people who are involved or professionals that are involved with pre-hospital care.

The presentations from the 2005 workshop are actually available on the naemsp.org website, the full PowerPoint presentations. So if you’re interested in looking at that, you can download those from there.

The attendees are again, a mixed group of PTM fellows, EM residents, EM nurses, EMS providers and EMS physicians, so we were happy to have that diversity. This year we got more representation from nursing than we have from the past so that was something we were happy about. We plan to propose to do this again in 2007. We are not sure about the funding yet but we hope to get that. If we do get funding the registration information will be posted on the NAEMSP website and we’ll try and disseminate that through as many other avenues as we can, mostly through e-mails. And I am a contact, if you’re interested and you want to sort of reserve a place in anticipation, you can email me.

The pediatric adhoc committee of NAEMSP, I’m the chairman of that. This is an open committee so unlike the ASEP committee anybody who is an NAEMSP member and wants to part of the pediatric committee can attend meetings and will be involved with the work that we do. The list here, is a list of the people who attended this years in person meeting in January.

And again, it’s mainly a physicians, pediatric emergency physicians, and EM physicians who have a role in EMS medical direction. In the past, we’ve had more professional members and we hope to have more so, it’s not limited to physicians. Certainly, any other EMS professionals who have interest in pediatric issues are welcome. This group this year was very vocal and very interested, I was happy to see that.

And they really wanted to create the committee as a home for people who are interested in pediatric EMS issues and as a start to do that we made two recommendations to EMSP board. One was that we would review any position paper that EMSP plans to send to the AAP for review or approval as sort of a screening for pediatric issues before it was sent to the AAP and two is that we would have an official liaison, let’s just say AAP section on transport medicine. We thought that was the closest place in AAP where there would be a home for people who are interested in EMS issues.

So the objective of this committee, one, was to revise the mild pediatric pre-hospital protocols and submit for publication in pre-hospital emergency care. The protocols were last revised in 2003. They are available through the NAEMSP website. They need to be revised again to incorporate the new HHA guidelines and also, we’re going to change the format based on feedback that we’ve gotten over the last couple of years. NAEMSP is helping to create model protocols for patients of all ages and we hope to integrate with that effort and perhaps contribute to that.

Our other objective is to improve the number of pediatric abstracts submitted to the NAEMSP annual meeting. Each year, about five or six abstracts get submitted that has pediatric specific content and we’d really like to see that number increase. There is a call for pediatric abstracts through NAEMSP, if you would like to submit an abstract the information is at NAEMSP.org. The abstract deadline for this year is August 25, so you still have plenty of time and if you get accepted and you get to go on a trip to Florida, which I will talk about in a few minutes.

And also, as an additional incentive, each year we have a prize for the best pediatric presentation. This prize is funded by the EMSC. This year, Dr. Halim Hennes won the prize for his abstract based on EMSC targeted issues grant that he had. And this was an impact of educational module on pre-hospital providers’ knowledge in pediatric pain physiology assessment and management.

The other two objectives are to increase and improve the pediatric specific educational content of the NAEMSP annual meeting. To do this, we have actually asked one of our members, Dr. Jim Callahan to be on the program committee that helps plan the annual meeting and help bring our ideas to that committee. And finally, is to develop an information paper or policy statement on field termination of resuscitation of pediatric patients. There are a number of people on the group that are interested in this topic and hopefully we’ll work on that.

Other projects that were brought up and issues that we’d like to work on are developments of a model pediatric base station course. There’s an adult base station course that’s put on by NAEMSP every year and we’d like to have a model pediatric base station course.

And then finally, to have a PEP course in conjunction with the next year NAEMSP meeting. Dr. Callahan is also working on the PEP course.

Other activities that we did this year, was contribute to the educational component of the last meeting. We also represent EMSP at multiple meetings including the EMSP state holders meeting, COPEM and emergency preparedness conference held by Columbia University.

Other activities that NAEMSP does that are EMSC related is that NAEMSP members continue to work and be funded by EMSC and it’s on the EMS education agenda and the EMS research agenda. And there’s the advocacy group, advocates for EMS that they share that they share with some of the other EMS professional agencies and they also are working on a response to the IOM report on helping to disseminate the information in the report.

And then finally as I promised, please join us in Florida in January in the Registry Resort in Naples. Thank you.