Life-Saving Pediatric Care in Action!

This week’s faculty members are no strangers to emergencies! Heart diseases, wheezing, allergic reactions, weakness, epileptic episodes, ingested objects, poisonings, sepsis, head injuries, as well as mentally unwell patients. The experts have witnessed and treated it all and were willing to share their expertise during the CHOP Seminar in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is one of the world’s most renowned institutions for children’s health and we are beyond proud to have been working with CHOP for 30 years to improve children’s health globally!

Course director Dr. Joseph J. Zorc (CHOP) teamed up with co-course director Dr. Burkhard Simma (University Teaching Hospital Feldkirch), Dr. Pamela Fazzio (CHOP), Dr. Kevin C. Osterhoudt (CHOP), and Dr. Mamata Senthil (CHOP) to lead the pediatric emergency medicine seminar from November 17 to 23, 2024. It is crucial to remark upon our faculty’s dedication to the cause. Dr. Simma, a real OMI veteran, was present for the 13th time this year, and Drs. Zorc and Osterhoudt taught not only during this course but also led an OMI Satellite Symposium in Slovakia before traveling to Salzburg!

The expert faculty’s specialty of pediatric emergency medicine is challenging for multiple reasons. Dr. Senthil elaborated on this topic by explaining that some of the challenges they face are the large volume of patients arriving at the ER which can clash with the capacity of the hospital, the desire to be detailed during each patient examination, while also being faced with a multitude of sick children in the waiting room, and families’ expectations of care often differing from the limits of care that can be provided. These factors are largely out of physicians’ control, adding to the high-stress environment. Despite these obstacles, pediatric emergency doctors, such as the faculty and fellows who gathered at Schloss Arenberg, still choose to give their all daily to treat children in need of medical attention.

The course schedule was an interesting mix of 20 didactic lectures, two interactive workshops, and fellows’ case presentation sessions. Key concepts of pediatric emergency care, including resuscitation and stabilization of common pediatric emergencies, as well as evolving evidence about the treatment of respiratory, neurologic, and infectious conditions of childhood were reviewed. An additional focus was toxicology and how to prevent and treat poisonings and toxic exposures in children. The fellows were highly engaged in asking questions and discussing the various approaches to these conditions across the world, and faculty commented on how much they learned and gained ideas to improve their talks in the future.

Two workshops, which saw the 36 fellows from 28 countries, including Colombia, Estonia, Ghana, Kosovo, and Portugal, rotating between different stations, comprised the highlights of this course. Monday’s workshop was titled “Minor Procedures” and Tuesday’s session was titled “Simulations and Procedures”. These hands-on training opportunities offered fellows the unique chance to immediately apply the information they learned during the faculty’s lectures and to test their prior knowledge of emergency procedures using modern Laerdal equipment, such as life-like mannequins. The four scenarios that fellows were faced with included a case of supraventricular tachycardias (SVT) in a one-year-old infant, a two-month-old baby with SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), a five-year-old boy battling septic shock, as well as a RQI (Resuscitation Quality Improvement) station at which they could practice their CPR skills.

Thanks to our vendors from Laerdal, Michael Grabner and Sabine Heider, for helping us make this workshop such a huge success!

Dr. Zorc explained the benefits of the simulation and procedures workshops for the fellows: “The hands-on workshops were a particularly valuable part of this course as they emphasized the importance of a structured team approach to successful resuscitation. We also reviewed common minor surgical procedures that are not always part of medical training in other parts of the world but may be useful in the emergency setting.”