ACEP Scientific Assembly
October 20th, 2001.
A meeting of the American Academy for Emergency Medicine in India (AAEMI) was held on October 15th, 2001 at 7:00 PM at the ACEP Convention Center in Chicago.
The meeting was chaired by Kumar Alagappan, MD (Vice-President of AAEMI, and Associate Chairman of Emergency Medicine, North-Shore LIJ Medical Center, NY)
Also present were:
- James Holliman, MD (Secretary, ACEP Section on International Emergency Medicine; Penn State University, PA)
- Gary Green, MD (President, Emergency International; Johns Hopkins, MD)
- Latha Stead, MD (Mayo Clinic, MN)
- Malani Singh, MD (Jacobi Medical Center, NY)
- Narayan Nayak, MD (Kaiser Permanente, CA)
- S. Mahadevan, MD (Stanford University, CA)
- Indrani A. Sheridan, MD (Baptist Medical Center, FL)
- Kavitha Cherkuri, MD (Fairfax, VA)
- Amarjit Singh, MD (Mount Sinai, Chicago IL)
- Chayan Dey, MD (Maryland)
The meeting opened with a discussion of the need to further develop Emergency Medicine, as a specialty in India. It was suggested that a good avenue for promoting EM was through the established teaching institutions, by fully incorporating EM into the medical school curriculum. It was noted that several hospitals already offered a fellowship equivalent in EM, based on the syllabus used in the United Kingdom. It was agreed that AAEMI would continue to offer training, resources and whatever assistance needed in supporting these efforts.
Also discussed was the fact that many House Officers in India who go through training in EM, experience difficulties relating to what they learned, until exposed to an emergency department here. It was suggested that trainees should be strongly encouraged to spend at least one month in the USA. Such efforts have already started at several teaching institutions around the country and have been particularly successful at Stanford University.
The next item on the agenda was the International Conference of Emergency Medicine in Hyderabad, India (INTEM 2002). Dr. Green said that he would be willing to send faculty members to lecture at INTEM 2002, and also that his group, Emergency International, would officially endorse the conference. Dr. Holliman suggested that it would be of benefit to have the International chapter of ACEP similarly involved.
At the last EM conference in Coimbatore, India (May 2001), the workshops were extremely popular with the participants. Based on their success, a plan was put in place to organize more workshops at INTEM 2002, targeted at a wider audience, including standard airway, pediatric, trauma and advanced cardiac stations, and also to offer direct patient contact or live-model ultrasound training.
The experience of the earthquake in Gujarat emphasized the need of greater coordination of efforts. Resources, manpower and skill were available, but without central coordination much of the work was redundant. The central role of EM in disaster planning and management was reiterated, and strong emphasis will be placed in the INTEM 2002 cirriculum on these topics.
The suggestion was made to try to elicit financial support for INTEM 2002 by local businesses and drug companies. Several people said that they had contacts, and promised to pursue these in the near future.
The AAEMI portion of the meeting concluded with a plan to reach out to other organizations in the USA, which were already working towards better healthcare in India. Official AAEMI representatives will be designated to contact these organizations.
Finally, the announcement was made of Dr K. Alagappan’s election earlier today to the ACEP Board of Directors as an Alternate Counselor, and the re-election of Dr. J. Holliman to the post of Secretary of the ACEP Section on International Emergency Medicine.