Directory of Emergency Physicians on Twitter
I just launched a new mini website called TwittER ReaserchER. It is essentially a directory of emergency physicians across the globe who are using Twitter. The project started during research for an article about use of Twitter among emergency physicians. I started tweeting in 2008, and at that time there were only but a few emergency docs out there, but now we managed to identify almost 700 of them. The results of the analysis we performed on their accounts are currently under review in Emergency Medicine Journal. Hopefully the article will be accepted and published soon, so I can share the results with you.
On the website you can find a list of all the emergency physicians we were able to find using Twitter. Each user is represented by his/hers profile picture. If you click on it, you will be taken to the user’s Twitter profile. The list is constantly updating, and if you are an emergency physician using Twitter or know someone who is, please follow @research_er to get included. On this account we also created lists organizing emergency physicians according to the year they started tweeting. You can easily subscribe to these lists.
On the site you can also see the timeline of tweets from all the emergency physicians. It is updating every hour, so you can use it to follow what emergency physicians are saying on Twitter. This way you can follow them, without even being a registered Twitter user, which you should be!
Hope you like the site. I will try to improve it and add more features soon. Of course, your ideas are always welcomed.
Prof. dr. Stefek Grmec: In Memoriam
I have been shocked and saddened today, when I heard the news that prof. Stefek Grmec from Slovenia has passed away. He was an astonishing emergency physician and a brilliant scientists, who has organized a fantastic ambulance service in his town of Maribor. In Maribor he was also a well respected professor and Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Maribor School of Medicine. I still remember his interesting lectures about the new methods in emergency medicine, especially ultrasound and capnography, which were among his main research interests. He also organized the best conference on resuscitation I ever attended – the First Maribor Resuscitation Summit ‘’On the Future of CPR”, which took place in 2010 and featured the best scientists from across the globe in the area of CPR.
I could go on and on about his professional achievements, but really what was most special about him was his kindness and openness towards his colleagues. I could always approach him, send him an email with some questions or ideas, and he was always very eager and glad to help. My deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues.
Rest in peace my dear prof. Grmec.
Creative CPR ads
Getting people to take notice of anything related to CPR is hard. Who cares, right? People would rather talk about Lady Gaga, sports, or whatever. Not many actually visit YouTube to search for CPR videos. So you have to be extremely creative to get their attention. Here are some great CPR ads that really get the message across to ordinary folks.
Vinnie Jones’ hard and fast Hands-only CPR
This ad has been released about 3 weeks ago by the British Heart Foundation, and has become viral in the last couple of days on Twitter and other social networks. It features Vinnie Jones, a famous English film actor and retired Welsh footballer, as a tough mobster giving you a lesson you will never forger. A lesson in hands-only CPR. There are two versions of the ad, with slight differences like the end, and you can see them both below.
Short version
Long version
More CPR ads after the break.
Read more »
Peticija za Hitnu medicinsku pomoc Pazin i Labin
Dear readers,
As most of you know, I never ever write posts in my native language. However, this time I am going to have to make an exception and call out my people in Croatia to stand up and fight for a better emergency medical system in our country.
Dragi posjetitelji,
Molim Vas da izdvojite malo svoga vremena za nešto što je od neizmjerne važnosti za sve nas koji živimo u Hrvatskoj.
Radi se o reorganizaciji Hitne medicinske pomoci, koju treba podržati, ali koja se na žalost ne provodi kako bi trebala. U Istri, gdje radim, pa tako i u cijeloj Hrvatskoj i dalje postoje brojni problemi s kojima se ova vrlo važna služba svakodnevno susrece. Jedan od velikih problema je nedovoljan broj ekipa na terenu i velika nejednakost izmedju velikih gradova kao što je npr. Zagreb i manjih sredina kao što su Pazin ili npr. naši otoci. Glavni razlozi zbog kojih je i zapocela reorganizacija Hitne medicinske pomoci u Hrvatskoj bili su podizanje standarda i ispravljanje nejednakosti. Nažalost, taj san koji smo dugo cekali nije se ostvario. Hitnih timova i dalje ima premalo da bi se moglo na kvalitetan nacin boriti za živote naših sugradjana u trenutcima kada život visi o koncu.
Bila reorganizacija ili ne, bila ona ovakva ili onakva, svejedno je. Naš cilj je bolja hitna služba u Hrvatskoj, pa kako god to bilo.
Procitajte tekst peticije koju su pokrenuli gradjani Istre za bolju i kvalitetniju hitnu temeljenu na strucnim kriterijima.
Ako se slažete, svakako je i potpišite te pošaljite svojim prijateljima. Nije bitno iz kojeg ste dijela Hrvatske, ovo je borba za svakog od nas.
http://peticija.hitna-pazin.org/
Published 2 papers and 1 video
Just recently my colleague and I have published two research papers. I am very proud of the first one titled “Mobile phone in the Chain of Survival”, which was published after a lot of research in the Resuscitation journal. This short paper gives an overview of vast possibilities possessed by mobile phones to be of assistance in medical emergencies. It represents a continuation of my work with CPR mobile applications. I have also now published a video of the lecture I gave during the Resuscitation 2010 congress about the same subject. You can watch my 10 minute lecture here, and read our paper at the Resuscitation website.
The second paper we wrote appeared in the Croatian journal Lijecnicki Vjesnik (in English this would be something like Physician’s Newsletter). It is a case report demonstrating a patient with smell disorders, which we suspect were caused be lacidipine, a calcium channel blocker used to treat hypertension. So far this drug has not been linked with smell disorders, but other calcium channel blockers from the same group are well known to cause such problems. The paper is written in Croatian, but its abstracts is available in English – Can lacidipine cause smell disorders? A case report.
Webicina smartphone app
My dear colleague dr. Bertalan Mesko, better known as Berci, who just happens to be one of the best medical bloggers out there, has recently published his own smartphone app. You see, apart from running a super successful blog called ScienceRoll, Berci is the founder and managing director of Webicina, a site that has been helping physicians enter the web 2.0 era and empowering patients to find medically reliable content online. Webicina curates online medical resources in social media for free in over 15 languages in over 80 medical specialties and conditions, and is now also available on the phone near you. Webicina mobile application makes it easier to access these selected resources on smartphones and also includes a Health 2.0 Quiz which was designed to help empowered patients and medical professionals know more about the world of medicine and social media.
I have been testing the app on my iPhone, however it will soon also be available for other mobile platforms as well. For now you can download it for free in the iTunes store. The app is very nicely designed, and the cool thing is that you can browse through all the listed resources inside the app, without the need to go back and forward between your web browser. In just a few minutes of playing around with it, I found some great new resources and reminded myself of all the great content inside the Emergency Medicine category in which this blog is also featured. I can already see that I will be spending many hours exploring valuable new content on my phone using Webicina app, and if you want to stay on top of your game in your field, I strongly suggest you do the same.
Thank you Berci for providing such a wonderful, easy to use and free application for medical professionals and patients!
Learn more about Webicina.
