The COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent quarantine of communities has caused many challenges that have affected GEC's bottom line. To combat this, we are doing two things: Celebrating our current Monthly Sustainers for their continued supportPutting out a call for…
The brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless others before them are a result of brutality that has been and still is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy and racist violence towards Black people.…
The COVID-19 Treatment Team at Masaka Hospital Patient volume in the ED – Fear of contracting COVID-19 In the US, Emergency Department (ED) patient volumes have been 40-50% lower than normal over the last month at University of Maryland Medical…
As we appreciate and give thanks to our mothers around the globe, I want to take this opportunity to highlight some of the extraordinary mothers working on the front lines of this pandemic. Life has been turned upside down for…
Emergency Medicine is a vast field, encompassing a knowledge base of essentially every other discipline in medicine and a wide array of procedural skills; practitioners need to constantly stay up to date. This can be a daunting task and one that requires significant support to be achievable.
To support our graduates after they finish their two-year Emergency Care Practitioner training, we are launching the Continuing Education & Leadership (exCEL) Program. The exCEL Program will provide graduates with continuing medical education opportunities to review higher level content, learn new skills, and receive additional mentorship after they graduate. Furthermore, it will enable ECPs to attend regional retreats and larger scale conferences, take emergency care training courses, and access online resources. Once back at their home hospitals, we’re working to set up visits to work with administration on integrating emergency care into their facilities and regular phone calls to support ECPs in their new environment.The need for continuing medical education
In the US, continuing medical education (CME) is required in every field of medicine in order to provide the highest possible level of patient care. Innovations impact how patients should be assessed, treated, and cared for. As a result, medical professionals have to continue their education and stay on top of these changes. Only by doing so can they confidently provide patients with the level of care they deserve. And while continuing medical education is ubiquitous in the US, no such infrastructure exists for emergency care practitioners in Uganda.
As GEC enters our 11th year training Emergency Care Providers, we’re concentrating on CME to achieve sustainability and maintain the excellent outcomes for patients cared for by the ECPs. We’re defining CME in the broadest terms possible—striving not to just maintain skills, but to continually build new skills as the practice of emergency medicine in Africa evolves. This will take creativity on our part, as the continuing education infrastructure for emergency medicine in Africa is in its most nascent stages.
"I realized that by spending a few extra minutes evaluating this patient with bedside ultrasound, Alfunsi may have saved this man’s arm." By Dr. Leigha Winters, GEC Volunteer Reposted with permission from SONOSTUFF: Education and entertainment for the ultrasound enthusiast Having traveled…
By: Dr. Lori Stoltz, GEC Ultrasound Director The eFAST exam is the most widely adopted ultrasound examination for use in the emergency department. This exam looks at six locations on the body and can identify blood in the abdomen, blood around the…
"As our primary diagnostic tool, ultrasound can provide a fabulous amount of confirmatory and ancillary information." By: Dr. Michael Schick, Director of Ultrasound While working in the emergency department at Nyakibale Hospital in Rukingiri, Uganda a two-year-old boy arrives with…
By: Dr. Michael Schick, GEC Ultrasound Director At Masaka Hospital in Uganda our Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) have acquired specialized emergency training in point-of-care ultrasound. In this specific diagnostic skill set, they are the most trained practitioners in the region. While…
By: Lori Stolz, MD, GEC Ultrasound Director & Alexa Sabedra, MD, GEC VolunteerOn our first day in Masaka, while sitting in on the chest pain lecture being given to the ECP 1s, Deus (an ECP 2 who was working in…