Emergency medicine requires resilience and the ability to accept uncertainties.

That’s the message of Associate Professor Eillyne Seow, Vice President and founding figure of the Singapore College of Emergency Physicians, who will be a keynote speaker at the 35th Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) in Perth next month.

“The willingness to consider possibilities requires a tolerance of uncertainty,” Associate Professor Seow says, quoting Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., a Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF School of Medicine and the Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness in California. She is one of the pioneers of Relationship Centered Care and Integrative Medicine.

Associate Professor Seow adds: “Emergency medicine is fun, has many puzzles for us to solve. It is also challenging with stressors from many quarters but we are a resilient group. Tolerance and resilience is certainly in our [emergency practitioners’] DNA.”
 
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Registration is open for the ASM, themed ‘On the Edge’. Join us 18-22 November in Perth where we explore the multiple different facets of life in emergency medicine.
Check out the program and further details on the ASM website.

Emergency medicine landscape

Starting her training in emergency medicine in 1987, Associate Professor Seow has a strong clinical and research interest in geriatrics, diagnostic error and patient safety.

When asked about the emergency medicine in Singapore and Australia and to highlight any similarities or differences, Associate Professor Seow says “emergency medicine care cannot be exported”. “We share similar patient demographics [multiracial, multicultural]. However the resources we have and the way we deploy them are different,” she says.

Associate Professor Seow says meetings like the ASM are a good opportunity to “get together to bounce ideas against each other, share possible solutions”.

“I was delighted to receive the invitation [to be a keynote speaker]. It has been a while since I have met up with my friends in the Australian emergency medicine world. I am looking forward to catching up with them,” Associate Professor Seow says.

“The Perth healthcare community have over the last few years generously hosted Singaporean emergency physicians, I would like to take this opportunity to thank them,” she adds.

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