Its been six months that we have started this website to talk about emergency medicine. This is also beginning of the year time and a new beginning is waiting for us at the emergency department at Shifa International Hospital. I thought to share with you all, efforts that we did for the emergency medicine in Pakistan.
Pakistan is one of those country that has embarked the journey of emergency medicine training as a separate discipline. This is fairly recent phenomenon for the world to have a separate training program for the emergency medicine for very obvious reasons. The thinking process required to work in the emergency department is unique and cannot be matched to any other discipline of medicine. It is not like intensive care to have the sickest patients all the time or like surgical OPD to have people with acute illness that needs surgical input. Its a mixture of all and due to this requires unique mindset of entertaining variety of differential diagnoses at all the patients that we come across. It also is the last place that people turn to have their questions answered or condition stabilized. This is also unique in the sense that you have to get to the bottom of the patients problem, and to do it quick.
When I joined Shifa International Hospital in 2009, Shifa has taken a very important step in upgrading its emergency department to the level that could somehow be close to the emergency departments of the world. We were two consultants and it was a challenge to run the emergency department as very few people had the understanding of how the emergency room should be run. We were shorthanded and no one that worked in our emergency room had any previous experience of working in emergency rooms. Obviously no one had the training in emergency medicine either.
Aga Khan of Karachi was way ahead of every one in Pakistan. They had started their own residency program and it was slowly getting mature. We were in touch with them and meeting with each other through a common thread and that was SEPP (Society of Emergency Physicians Pakistan). We talked about having a residency program through College of Physicians and surgeons. So we got involved in the effort to convince CPSP(College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan) through meetings and presentations. This effort was mainly done by Dr. Junaid Razzaq of Aga Khan University Hospital and seconded by Dr. Haseeb Khawaja of Shifa International. We made significant progress with personal involvement from Dr. Shoaib Shafi of CPSP. Finally in 2010, CPSP decided to add Emergency Medicine as a separate discipline for the training courses offered by CPSP in their FCPS program.
It was a dream come true. We already had realized the value of the program and now we had the college agreeing with us to initiate the training. Now we started convincing our hospital to have the training. Fortunately the hospital administration had clear vision about it and they wanted to go ahead with the program.
So getting things ready for the inspection and being ready for the program was a significant milestone. By that time I was the Director of Emergency room and my challenge was many folds. We wanted to upgrade the Emergency room to make it emergency Department, then convince the management to have adequate staff and finally to convince people to join the emergency training program. I found the last task the most daunting of all, as people were not convinced that this field has any practical value. They were also not convinced that if it will make them any money if they opted it as a career.
We did not give up, and continued to have the struggle to win people over. In the meantime Agha Khan Hospital started with their first batch of FCPS residents after becoming the first recognized center for the training in Emergency Medicine. We were behind them in getting the residents for our own program. Our emergency program got a boost when our faculty was joined by our second ER consultant who was coming from England. Dr. Junaid Mustafa helped streamline the processes and also the work of the emergency department and we covered a lot of ground quickly.
Today I am happy to say that we have completed the interview process for the very first batch of residents and our program has become a reality now. The journey is ongoing and we are happy that some ground has been covered. Its a long effort that is needed for a country that lacks in so many respects. Its an effort that we owe to the people of Pakistan as being on the forefront of the medical field and also to have the realization that emergency care needs to be improved for all the citizens of Pakistan.
As always, you can get in touch with me through my email askhan65@yahoo.com.