That is because Professor Ganbold Lundeg’s work to deliver emergency medicine to the cities, mountains and steppes of Mongolia has produced some wonderful results, and there is more to come.
Providing access to emergency training. A new Mongolian Emergency Manual. The establishment of undergraduate and registrar emergency medicine training programs. These are some of the highlights in Professor Ganbold's charge to make emergency medicine an integral part of Mongolia’s health system.
And a new major hospital, catering for all specialties including emergency medicine, will soon open.
An anesthesiologist at Ulaanbaatar city’s Hospital Number One, Professor Ganbold is one of the ACEM Foundation’s International Scholarship recipients. Working closely with the College and its FACEMs and trainees has seen him build the capacity of emergency medicine in his country.
“Through the ACEM Foundation I was introduced to and experienced the modern emergency medicine system, which changed my understanding and attitude towards to emergency medicine and its influences,” Professor Ganbold said.
The Scholarship funded Professor Lundeg to attend the 2016 ACEM Annual Scientific Meeting in Queenstown, New Zealand. He also visited several Australian and New Zealand hospitals to explore their emergency departments and the ACEM training program.
As part of his trip to Australia, Professor Ganbold signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences and ACEM. The MOU invites ACEM to collaborate on a variety of emergency medicine education measures in Mongolia including rural training, the undergraduate program, post graduate training, and even staffing of the new University Hospital emergency department once it opens.
And that momentous occasion is not too far away, with Professor Ganbold saying the emergency department will open in the next six months, “to function as an acute, up-to-date emergency room with modern emergency medicine facilities”.
Inspiring work
Professor Ganbold said his current priority was ensuring the best training was being delivered for emergency medicine trainees. “We are trying a variety of options including looking at the doctors of the tertiary and secondary level being able to teach, to doctors who works in rural area alongside or with little support and left behind,” he said.
“The work in frontline of Emergency Medicine is truly inspiring, while we assess and manage the seriously ill patients in time concerning conditions, keep the patients alive to diagnosed and treated underlying condition.
"Teaching the students to help them to acquire the skills and experiences and train them to save lives of nomads in resource-limited environment is inspiring."
Determination to overcome challenges
As well as capacity issues facing the country’s hospitals, Professor Ganbold said another challenge was upskilling rural GPs in emergency medicine, “as this is the most important approach in the improvement of emergency medicine accessibility in Mongolia”.
When asked what more can be done to advance emergency medicine, Professor Ganbold said there was a need to, “broaden the global emergency medicine movement, to help each other, learn from each other, and share with each other”.
“We need to have real champions on the international level and lead the progress of emergency medicine globally, and define the key indicators of emergency medicine, for example accessibility, safety, quality, and socio-economic benefit of acute care,” he said.
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Background
Read the background to Professor Ganbold’s work and the involvement of FACEMs in establishing emergency medicine in Mongolia, as told in the IEMNet News, the newsletter of the International Emergency Medicine Network of ACEM.