Completely disagree with Andy.

It is a sad reflection on individual Emergency Medicine Consultants if
they require these courses to remain current with the literature and
guidelines around resuscitation. You are surposed to be leaders in the
field of resuscitation for goodness sake - if you need these courses to
stay upto date or competent at resusciation then heaven help us.

There is a place in the context of the resuscitation leadership role
within a Hospital or Region to instruct on these courses for sure and
you also need to know what they are teaching the juniors.

No issue with the need to QA knowledge and skills in resuscitation and
these courses are certainly one way, but making it mandatory? Bollocks.
Many ways to QA your resus - we video, we real time peer review, we
auidt. Ditto for making sure your working as a team - many ways.


I seriously have better things to do with my limited professional
development time. There are several cutting edge conferences on
Emergency Cardiac Care and some fantastic trauma meetings and here we
are talking about keeping upto date on a merit badge course - fantastic.

No offence Andy, you are likely an instructor or on the council of one
of these organisations, but I think making these courses mandatory to
practicing EP's is professionally insulting.

The next European Emergency Cardiology Meeting I believe is in Rome next
year which is an infinitely better use of my CME time - and if Im
worried Im not familiar with the local guidelines, I can read them on
the plane flying out.


cheers

Craig


-----Original Message-----
From: Accident and Emergency Academic List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of A Lockey
Sent: Sunday, 18 January 2009 12:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Resuscitation provider status

Slightly biased here, but the answer has to be "yes"

The courses all update with evolving evidence base and updated
international guidelines. They are therefore a way of keeping up to
speed with current guidelines. Most of these courses have some form of
abbreviated recertification course if you do not want to do the whole
course again.


Also, most have a validity for 4-5 years now. This obviously doesn't
mean that no learning or local refresher training should be done in the
meantime as deemed necessary. It dos however mean that you are not
having to re-do each course every 3 years as happened in the past. The
timescales now fit more appropriately with when guidelines are more
likely to b different.

Finally, several of the courses are now looking at e-learning components
to the course, in part to address the issue of pressure on "time out"
for instructors and candidates alike.

In my department, it is a mandatory requirement that all Consultant and
Middle Grades have at least Provider status in ALS, ATLS and either EPLS
or APLS. This is checked on an annual basis at appraisal. We have not
experienced any problem with this being achieved.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Accident and Emergency Academic List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Webster
Sent: 17 January 2009 11:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Resuscitation provider status

Issue raised by our resus training officer who is looking at staff
training matrix.


Would you expect consultant and middle grade staff to be up to date in
ALS/atls/epls or apls

With the cost of courses limited leave other competing needs it is
difficult to achieve all three, possibly with limited additional benefit
if you get sufficient exposure in your work

Andy


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