Abdus Salam Khan Feb 2020
The care of most sick and complex cases happen either in the emergency department or through the work of emergency department staff. The importance of good and standard clinical care is well understood by the world now and we all understand that this kind of urgency and complexity requires proper competence in areas such as procedural competence and also on resource utilization as well as on communication skills.
This realization have led to bringing people on a common platform to improve the level of care to our patients Coming to the emergency departments. The understanding regarding emergency care has started its roots in mid 20th century and ultimately resulted in collaborative work in 1991. International Federation of Emergency Medicine was founded in 1991 with four collaborative organizations from USA, UK, Canada and Australia. The work slowly advanced as the understanding grew regarding emergency medicine and the full membership of IFEM grew to about 50 by the year 2020.
The goal of IFEM is to develop the highest level of emergency care provision to all people of the world. This work is done through education, and also creating standards in teaching, training and thus providing the standardized and safe emergency care. This whole work ultimately leads to collaboration and networking among member countries and working to ultimately promote level ofemergency care in all countries.
Since the Federation is the constellation of various countries with different levels of maturity regarding emergency medicine, giving it a unique combination of being highly competent and developed for few members as well as beginner and in need for support for the majority members.
For Pakistan the journey of emergency medicine started quite late but we are catching up with the world. What in 2005 was two institutions barely struggling to promote emergency medicine is now quite developed small program of emergency medicine which has started to produce its product of trained physicians.
After starting the training and initiating the understanding a society was created. All trainees and trainers started collaborating on a single platform call Pakistan Society of Emergency Medicine. It was formed in 2018 while the idea was in some shape and form hatching since 2008. It has started working towards playing the role on international forum as well as nationally. We became a member of IFEM in 2020. Through IFEM we are working to achieve our goal of improving the emergency care across Pakistan.
We are at the beginning of the learning curve as the country. We need to learn from people who have done these tasks in the past and they can teach us what has worked for them and what has not. We also will have the opportunity to collaborate with countries with similar circumstances and work on similar projects. Availability of educational resource as well as competence training will make it easy to progress in Pakistan.
We are already collaborating with Royal College of emergency medicine UK and Pakistani origin physicians of Australia and Middle East. Through different seminars, workshops and solitary lectures they have played a significant role and continue to be the good resource for the country.
For all physicians working in the emergency department across Pakistan the presence of Pakistan Society of Emergency Medicine and now being part of IFEM is quite significant as it becomes a platform to discuss the issues as well as solutions to our problems in providing care. They will also have the chance to present their research on the international platform and be part of bringing the change.
I am confident if we were collectively then the day is not far when we can be seen as a success story of improving emergency care for the people of Pakistan.