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Highlights of RCEM ASC 2023

Highlights of RCEM ASC 2023

RCEM Annual Scientific Conference was an incredible success, both with those who came to Glasgow and attended virtually over 26 - 28 September.

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RCEM Annual Scientific Conference (ASC) was an incredible success last month, both with those who came to Glasgow and attended virtually over 26 – 28 September. Each of the three days proved incredibly insightful with almost 90 presenters engaging with an audience of nearly 700 delegates.

Nearly 70 presentations and sessions were held across the three days covering a wide range of emergency medicine (EM) topics including mental health and psychiatric care, wellbeing, preventative medicine, toxicology and critical care and resuscitation.

Those who attended virtually got to watch 50 presenters provide over 50 presentations live on our conference platform and these are now all available through the RCEM On-Demand channel. The activity on X (formerly Twitter) was also brilliant, with many attendees and presenters engaging with the #RCEMasc hashtag.

For those who feel they missed visiting RCEM ASC and want to attend our next event, the Spring CPD Conference will take place at the ICC Wales on 16 – 18 April 2024, register your interest for the event now to be the first to know when registrations open. This will also be a hybrid conference with options for delegates to attend virtually. You can find out how our conference platform worked for RCEM ASC in a blog post.

Presidential Address

RCEM President, Dr Adrian Boyle (X: @RCEMpresident), gave a passionate speech, which included how we are advocating on behalf of our members through the Resuscitate Emergency Care campaign. He also spoke strongly on policy by saying how he would raise awareness of the daily realities our members face to policy makers, these included important matters such admission delays and overcrowding causing harm and deaths to patients.

Commenting on the conference’s success, Dr Boyle said: “It was amazing. We had eminent professors presenting alongside bright medical students on topics as diverse as migrant health, carbon monoxide, sepsis, cyber security, hidden trauma in older people, REBOA, smoking cessation and many more. It was glorious.”

David Williams Lecture

Professor of EM at the University of Sheffield, Suzanne Mason, delivered a fantastic David Williams Lecture titled ‘Is it choice not chance that will determine our destiny?’ about the challenges faced in the EM and the research being done to find solutions to take control of the situation. She spoke passionately about many issues, including that ED pressures are no longer limited to winter, and that she saw how patients are suffering year-round and as a result EDs are suffering “across the board”.

Her presentations was described as “a hard-hitting half hour about making choices for emergency medicine now to improve things for the future rather than leaving it to chance,” by attendee Dr Chris Gray (X: @cgraydoc), Consultant in Intensive Care and  EM  and Intensive Care Medicine at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, who has done a brilliant roundup of day one, two, and three of the conference. He added: “We’re the only specialty where patients have unfiltered access at all hours of the day – it’s not sustainable, but what can we do about it?”

The RCEM’s podcast roundup is also available to listen to.

Professor Mason ended her presentation to thunderous applause, she ended by quoting Sir William Osler: “Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has”.

Prize Winners

Congratulations to Dr James van Oppen (X: @J_vanOppen), University of Leicester, who won the Rod Little Prize Papers after presenting ‘Relative hypotension: the mortality effect of below baseline systolic pressure in older people receiving emergency care’ and ‘Measuring what matters: validation of the Patient Reported Outcome Measure for Older People living with frailty receiving Acute Care (PROM-OPAC)’, winning with the second presentation. He is pictured above being presented the award from Professor Jason Smith (left), Chair of the RCEM Research Committee.

Well done to the other Rod Little Prize Paper speakers Dr Sophie Richter, University of Cambridge; Dr Tom McKernan, Stepping Hill Hospital; Dr Natasha Matthews, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; and Dr Cal Doherty, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, who all gave incredible presentations on their chosen subjects.

Earlier in the year we opened a competition to ask our membership for the next subject area for a new Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) to begin in Autumn 2024. We had several submissions, and the winner was announced during the conference. It was exciting to hear that Chris Humphries, Mikhail Vella-Baldacchino (who is featured in a video interview in the X section below) and Isabella Richmond-Hewlett will be working on our next QIP titled ‘Adolescent Mental Health in the Emergency Department’ to be published in October 2024. They are pictured (above right-side image) with Gordon Miles, RCEM CEO.

Look out for the EMJ

All oral abstracts from the conference will be printed in the November issue of the Emergency Medicine Journal (EMJ). If you missed any of this cutting-edge research being presented across the conference, you’ll be able to read through them in full in the special ASC abstracts supplement. It’ll not only including all the Rod Little Prize Papers, including winner’s Dr James van Oppen’s paper, but all papers from the Free Papers, Moderated Papers and Lightning Paper sessions.

With on-demand access to the conference, you can watch in full the Rod Little Prize Papers and Free Paper sessions being delivered. Find out how today’s research could affect your practice tomorrow.

Professor Ellen Weber (X: @emjeditor), University of California, San Francisco and Editor of the Emergency Medicine Journal (pictured above), presented ‘Are we there yet? Progress and pitfalls and perils in EM research’, which you can watch on demand.

Annual General Meeting

The AGM took place at RCEM ASC and featured updates from the College President Dr Adrian Boyle, Chief Executive Officer Gordon Miles and Treasurer Dr Scott Hepburn.

Dr Boyle highlighted the progress that has been made influencing for positive change on behalf of RCEM’s more than 11,000 members during 2022, including the impact the College’s Policy team has had informing and educating MPs and policy makers.

RCEMLearning was also described by Dr Boyle as the College’s ‘jewel in the crown’ and he praised the College’s GreenED initiative.

Dr Boyle also shared RCEM’s medal winners for 2023 and other College medals for 2023. The full list has been shared in our AGM Summary.

RCEM CEO Gordon Miles spoke candidly about the pressures and impact the tough global economic situation has had on the College but added that RCEM has still delivered a monumental amount of positive progress – thanking the army of volunteers from across the country who help to achieve this.

The final presentation was by RCEM treasurer Dr Scott Hepburn, who covered the challenges that 2022 presented and how these would be addressed.

Thank You

RCEM would like to extend a special thank you to all the speakers, oral abstract presenters, poster presenters, chair, and moderators without who the conference would not have been such a success. If you attended either in-person or virtually during the conference, then we hope you found the event useful and inspiring. We thank you for engaging, commenting, and asking such pertinent questions during the sessions. Remember you can watch the keynotes and track one of the conference on-demand at any point over the next 12-months. If you missed out, then you can book your place now on-demand to catch-up at your own pace.

Our final thank you is to our sponsors who brought along such innovative products and services to the conference. Thank you to Aerogen, AstraZeneca, Eolas Medical, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, FUJIFILM Sonosite, Galen | Penthrox (methoxyflurane), General Medical Council, LumiraDx, MeMed, QuidelOrtho, Radiometer Limited, Sarstedt Ltd, SERB Pharmaceuticals and Trauma App.

Check out X for more #RCEMasc

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