Continuing education is vital to your growth as a professional, particularly in a demanding and high-stress career in emergency medicine. Practice norms are consistently shifting to meet new needs. Scientific innovations can upend common wisdom and revolutionize the way you care for your patients. To stay ahead of the trend, you must participate in ongoing training. Moreover, regular training in key skills—especially life-saving skills that you may not use daily—ensures all agencies can offer the best possible care.

In October of 2012, the northeastern United States was slammed with arrival of Superstorm Sandy. As the most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic season, Sandy wreaked havoc on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and vital infrastructure systems such as power, transportation, and water treatment facilities suffered billions of dollars in damages.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed virtually everything about medicine. From surgery and childbirth without a support person to delaying routine medical care, the reverberations of the crisis extend well beyond those who become infected. First responders have had to rethink much about their emergency preparedness strategies, particularly now that once-routine procedures present a high risk of disease transmission. Here’s what you need to know about performing tracheostomies during the coronavirus. 

Today’s hospitals must be ready for everything. Whether it means complying with the 250 yard rule, or dealing with a regional or national disaster, or, as has been made so painfully clear, managing the patient surge generated by a national pandemic like COVID, hospitals must be prepared. Unfortunately, disaster can take many forms: earthquakes, floods, disease, terrorist action are just a few. Since there is no such thing as a “normal disaster,” the hospital must be prepared to handle anything the world throws at them. In this article, we will discuss 4 obstacles that a hospital can be faced with when a disaster strikes:

Sooner or later, every nursing home will face a major emergency. Nursing home emergencies exist along a continuum.Issues such as choking may affect only a single patient, whereas outbreaks of the flu and other infectious diseases such as COVID-19 can endanger the lives of every resident. In 2017, natural disasters affected 8 percent of the U.S. population—and nursing home residents are not exempt from these statistics. Any of these incidents can lead to additional health issues, such as infectious outbreaks and chronic respiratory issues, so it is important to implement a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan. 

Pediatric cardiac arrest is a rare event outside of hospital settings. In the hospital, where children with serious morbidities need specialized care, it is more common. Prompt resuscitation can prove life-saving, transforming a condition that would almost inevitably be fatal into a minor trauma. But as the COVID pandemic ravages the world, pediatric resuscitation practices are changing.

For every 1,000 Americans, 423 made an emergency room visit to a community hospital in 2013. The population of the United States that year was 316.5 million, so when you do the math, that’s almost a whopping 134 million ER visits. This number doesn’t include millions of hospital inpatient stays or outpatient procedures, further emphasizing the importance—and challenges—of providing quality care every time someone walks in, or is wheeled in, the door.

Healthcare costs in the United States are soaring. Americans spend more on healthcare than people in any other nation. Health systems, too, are struggling, facing enormous administrative costs and losing money when people cannot afford to pay their health bills. So it’s understandable that many agencies want to spend as little on medical equipment as possible. 

The challenge is that a few months or a few years down the line, they’re shelling out more cash. Cheap equipment is cheap for a reason. Durable equipment supports better patient care and may save you money over the long term.

As COVID-19, the virus that causes the novel coronavirus infection, continues to ravage the world, medical providers have had to change virtually everything about how they practice. Suctioning a patient is no exception. Providers once only had to weigh the risks and benefits of suctioning to the patient. Now they must also consider how suctioning might endanger their own health, and how it might imperil subsequent patients if they become infected. 

Airway suctioning can generate dangerous aerosols that effectively transmit the virus. In emergency scenarios, Suction Assisted Laryngoscopy and Airway Decontamination (SALAD) may offer a lower-risk alternative to traditional airway suctioning.