The University of Health Sciences (UHS) Lahore has established an Institute of Learning Emergency Medicine (ILEM) to train medical students, health professionals and emergency relief workers in basic and advanced life support courses. The institute has been established in collaboration with Disaster Relief by Irish and Pakistani (DRIP), Ireland, National Ambulance Services College, Dublin and Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council of Ireland. UHS Vice Chancellor Professor Malik Hussain Mubbashar, Director Emergency Medicine University College Dublin, Prof Dr Gerard Bury and Head of Education and Competency for the National Ambulance Services Ireland Prof Macartan Hughes inaugurated the institute on Monday.
UHS VC declared 2011 as the ‘Year of Emergency Medicine and Pre-Hospital Emergency Care’. He said that patient’s immediate care was a field in medicine which needed to be standardized as most of lives were lost in first 10 ‘golden’ minutes of any emergency such as heart attacks, strokes, shock and trauma. “In Pakistan, the importance of emergency services is greatly undermined and even in the ‘best’ facilities, it is merely an extension of inpatient departments rather than a specialty in itself,” Prof Mubbashar said adding that emergency departments in the hospitals needed to be structured on modern clinical guidelines.
He said that UHS had already introduced, for the first time in Punjab, basic and advanced life support as compulsory courses in final year MBBS. He asked Dr Bury to launch dual degree master’s programme in emergency care with the collaboration between UHS and University College Dublin. The project director of Institute of Learning Emergency Medicine (ILEM) Ireland, Dr Khurram Shahzad said that international visiting faculty would run a workshop from May 16 to 19 for the emergency staff of Edhi Ambulance Services, Rescue 1122 and students and faculty of affiliated institutions of UHS. He said that all courses were designed and delivered with a hands-on approach.
The students would be encouraged to practice and demonstrate both the skills and the knowledge necessary to save lives, he said adding that the basic objective was to prevent death from emergencies.
He further said that doctors expected to learn resuscitation skills in the clinical settings when there was little opportunity to correct poor techniques. Once students became house officers, their time for training was limited, he said. “Given this situation and the fact that many junior doctors are not competent in carrying out effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), training in basic and advanced life support should become standardized and mandatory component of undergraduate curriculum in medical colleges,” he opined.
Dr Khurram further said that faculties for courses such as Cardiac First Responder (CFR), Emergency First Responder (EFR) and other accredited courses were being developed in Pakistan and AJ&K. The ILEM faculties had so far trained 4,890 professionals all over the country. All these trainings are supervised by visiting international faculty, he said adding that ILEM had developed first EDHI Ambulance Services School and faculty for all Emergency Services Academy Rescue 1122. He also said that AJ&K government had made these courses mandatory for all health workers from Grade 1 to 19.
