FACEM Dr Louis Christie will discuss the important issue of end of life care when he takes to the stage at April's geriatric emergency medicine conference, GEM SEM 2019.
Dr Christie will be on the panel along with FACEM Dr Michael Downes and Geriatrician Dr Mohammed Khateeb. FACEM Dr Nemat Alsaba will chair the session.
The panel will be exploring the practical implications of the legal framework on end of life care in the emergency department. What do emergency physicians need to know about end of life law, to effectively provide care to someone who is close to death, and for whom resuscitation is either medically-inappropriate, or who has expressed a clear desire not to be subject to aggressive managed?
“The panel discussion will explore issues of substitute decision-makers, and how an emergency physician can ensure that their management decisions and treatment plan fall within the legal framework,” Dr Christie says.
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GEM SEM 2019 will be held on Thursday, April 4 in Sydney.
GEM SEM is the best conference around for those interested in geriatrics and emergency medicine. It was started three years ago by a group made up of some emergency physicians from the ACEM Geriatrics special interest group, PHEMC.org and other clinicians who collaborated to fill the need for continuing professional development in this field. It has gone from strength to strength.
Check out the program and further details on the event website.
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A central component of emergency medicine
Dr Christie says geriatric emergency medicine has become a central component of emergency medical practice. “While many of us arrived in the specialty attracted by the management of acute severe illness and major trauma in young people, an emergency physician will spend much more of their professional life managing sudden deterioration in the geriatric population,” he says.
“It might not be what grabs the headlines, but it is what we spend our days doing. If we do it well, then we have the opportunity to streamline the management."
Dr Christie says he is looking forward to the conference, and urges colleagues to attend.
“Brief, targeted meetings to discuss various aspects of the sub-specialty are vitally important to developing expertise in the increasing variety of our work,” he says.