Friday, June 26, 2015

smaccUS - Day 2

Alright. Day 2 at SMACC, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. LOTS of folks who are HUGE in the FOAM scene, and many are VERY cool about it. This phenomenon, of course, has a hashtag (#smaccSquee) I got to talk with John Hinds and Mark Wilson after a session this afternoon, and both seemed genuinely interested in interacting with us mere mortals. J.

 Like yesterday, I'll do my 3 big takeaways:

  1. Impact Brain Apnea is a thing. While I'd never heard the term before, I've surely heard the phenomenon described. now, perhaps, I'll not write it off as simple bystander hysteria.
  2. Some EM docs, even from "GREAT" hosptials, still don't understand what EMS is, what EMS does, and what tools we actually have. That was midly depressing, BUT quite a few EM docs in the room took to Twitter to defend "us", so things aren't really that bad.
  3. Ultrasound looks REALLY REALLY cool, and I REALLY need to learn how to use it, because it's clearly the future of medicine, especially in the emergent environment.

The conference closed for the day with SonoWars, a combination of education and contests for folks who know about ultrasound. As much as I KNOW I know nothing about ultrasound, I still found it VERY interesting. It's fairly clear that ultrasound technology is only going to become more portable and less expensive, and will likely continue to be embraced as a prehospital diagnostic tool.

Like many things at SMACC, there was a song:





SMACC 2016 has been announced as Dublin, Ireland. There are so many variables at play, but I'm going. This has been so much fun that I can't imagine sitting on the sidelines and just watching next year. Come join me! There's already been talk of the #EMSWolfpack doing an AirBNB share or similar, recognizing we are all poor medics, and if we save money in housing, it gives us more money to play tourist.



After the conference proper, there was a gala dinner on Navy Pier. Live band, food, alcohol, and lots of SMACC-Talk made for a fun time. A highlight of the evening was seeing my old mentor "Sparky" (@EMBasic) and how much a part of FOAMed he is, specifically with the EMBasic blog and podcast. A bunch of the "#EMSWolfpack"crew ended up hanging out outside by the Blues Brothers car. Of course, I wasn't there, but after meeting up with a few others, we met Henrick from Sweden, who's a nurse anesthetist that works in EMS. We had a short discussion on nurse-based EMS vs. medic-based EMS, and decided that we pretty much do the same thing J.






Anyway - Today is the 3rd and final day. Please follow the hashtags and partcipate at least a bit. Once this is over, much of the material will be condensed into podcasts and other forms of FOAM.

 Previous Coverage:
smaccUS Day 0
smaccUS Day 1
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