For FACEM Dr Natalie May, managing conflict and mastering the art of feedback are valuable skills, and that is exactly what she will talk about when she presents at The Emergency SA (EMSA) Conference in August.
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To be held 3-4 August at the Adelaide Convention Centre, the conference is the shared vision of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM), the College of Emergency Nursing Australasia (CENA) and Paramedics Australasia (PA).
To download the program, find our more information and register, visit the event website.
Sticky situations
Dr May is a FACEM working as a Staff Specialist in Prehospital and Retrieval Medicine for the Greater Sydney Area Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (GSA-HEMS).
She will speak about “dealing with the kind of sticky situations at work that we would prefer to avoid” and will pass on tips on giving feedback and provide examples of frameworks when addressing those difficult conversations.
“Feedback is my passion area in medical education,” Dr May said. “Traditionally we have all been pretty bad at it, and there are some really simple ways we can make it much better.
“I’m going to talk about making feedback better; how we, as educators and teachers, can understand what our learner colleagues need. This also helps us to understand what we need as lifelong learners and in turn to make sure the feedback we receive is useful to us.
“I will also look at the feedback that we have to give when something has gone wrong – how we can approach that in a structured way that deals with the emotional side of it as well as making sure we create a meaningful plan at the end to move forward.”
Dr May has been an editorial board member and contributor to the popular St Emlyn’s blog and podcast since 2012, where you can read and listen to her thoughts on conflict resolution and feedback.
“There is no place to hide in an emergency department, and as educators we have a responsibility to help our learners get better. It is also incumbent on both learners and educators to grow our knowledge and experience, build our ED community, and to be confident in giving feedback when feedback is key to improving performance, all in the aim of improving patient care,” Dr May said.
A different perspective
Dr May said she was looking forward to the conference and “hearing other people’s perspectives on similar problems. We are all in different situations facing the same issues, and sharing our solutions together is a really powerful way of making effective change”.
“And there is also a big cultural component in medicine, and we can drive cultural change by getting everybody on the same page. These collaborative events, that have a sense of community around them, are a really good way to do that,” Dr May said.
And why does she love emergency medicine?
“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” Dr May said. “I love the diversity, I love the fact that it is teamwork driven, I love that we are interested in everything from the paronychia [nail infection] to the resuscitation, and that we are there for people at every situation they find themselves in, whenever they need us. That for me is at the heart of good clinical care.”