The EUSEM board regretfully must annul the recent election results for Vice-President and announces that a new electoral process for Vice President will be organised next year. 

The board arrived at this decision following the discovery of problems within the electoral procedure.  Routinely EUSEM employs an external IT provider for elections and also, provides instructions of eligibility for members to vote.

It came to the board’s attention that a number of noneligible members had received access to vote and upon further enquiry, it became clear that there had been a failure of voting security checks. The IT company recognised their mistake and apologised. 

In light of these procedural failures, the election can no longer be considered valid.

The EUSEM board has engaged with both candidates and is grateful to both for their understanding and patience and both remain committed to EUSEM.

The Vice-Presidential elections will take place next year and as this year’s election has been annulled, a new, open call for candidates will be made.  EUSEM is also currently in the process of selecting another company that specifically specializes in electronic voting. 

The board officially apologises to its members and more specifically to the two candidates for the inconvenience and uncertainty that this situation has caused.

END

PRESS RELEASE

Embargo: 16:30 hrs CEST on Sunday 13 October 2024

Climate change is a health emergency too

International experts warn of impact on emergency medical services worldwide

Copenhagen, Denmark: International experts in emergency medicine have warned that climate change is likely to have a severe impact on emergency services around the world. Despite this, few countries have assessed the scale of the impact or have a plan to deal with it.

In a special session at the European Emergency Medicine Congress today (Sunday), Luis Garcia Castrillo, a professor in emergency medicine, now retired, at the Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla, Santander, Spain, described how he and colleagues from EUSEM’s Emergency Medicine Day working group had asked 42 focus groups, consisting of experts in emergency medicine, prehospital care and disaster medicine, in 36 countries in 13 UN regions of the world to complete a survey on climate change awareness and preparedness [1]. The research is due to be published in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine [2].

“On a scale of 0 to 9, they rated the severity of the impact of climate change on health systems and specifically on emergency care, both now and in the future, at an average of 7,” he said. “This is a high figure, especially as some regions, such as northern Europe, consider it to be less of a problem than do other countries, such as Australia.

“The focus groups considered that the impact of climate change on emergency medical services would be similar or even higher than on global health systems. However, only 21% of the focus group members reported that assessments of the effect of climate change on emergency medical services had been carried out, and only 38% reported any measures had been taken to prepare for the impact of climate change .

“Out of all the focus group respondents, 62% said their governments or policy makers had made no assessment of the impact of climate change on emergency services, 9% said they didn’t know, 55% said nothing had been done to prepare for the impact of climate change, and 10% didn’t know.

“It is surprising how awareness is lacking in so many countries, as well as among emergency medicine societies. Some countries do not seem to be concerned at all. Yet this is going to affect rich and poor countries alike.”

Dr Roberta Petrino, director of the Emergency Department at Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale, Lugano, Switzerland, co-chaired the session “Climate change is a health emergency too”, and is a co-author of the report.

She said: “One interesting finding is that the need to implement actions to mitigate climate change is considered important everywhere. In particular, our survey showed the need to strengthen emergency medicine services and education programmes for medical students and emergency medicine doctors, as well as research.

“Emergency medical professionals are very worried about the effects of climate change on the care they provide. Our report shows that colleagues feel it’s an important problem around the world, although specific issues vary from one region to another and these relate to geographical position, the economic situation and the types of risks.”

Between 15 February and 15 March 2024, the researchers asked national and international emergency medicine associations around the world to set up focus groups of between four to six members to answer a series of questions. The 42 focus groups reported on general awareness and concern about climate change, and then ranked in terms of severity the different threats, the possible impacts on emergency medical departments, and, finally, the measures needed to mitigate the problems.

Across all the focus group responses, the top three major risks were pollution, flooding and heatwaves. Three minor risks were cold spells, wildfires and vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. The greatest impact was expected to be an increase in demands on the emergency medical services. The focus groups ranked preparation of strategic plans and education as the two strategic actions that were most important.

Focus groups from high income countries were most concerned about the risks of heatwaves, cold spells and wildfires. They considered the greatest impact would be increased numbers of patients, and they thought education and preparation of strategic plans were the most important actions necessary to mitigate the risks. Countries in northern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean were very concerned about displacement of populations and disruption to basic services.

Focus groups from low and middle-income countries ranked the impact of climate change on food production and disruption to health services as being the most significant risks.

Analysis of the data by region showed that climate change was expected to have a greater impact in Australasia, and countries in Eastern Europe, South Asia, South Saharan Africa and Central America. Countries such as Egypt and Nigeria expected the lowest impact, while South Saharan African regions expected the highest. There were significant differences between regions for the risks of vector-borne disease, climate-related diseases, wildfires, extreme weather events and food shortages. Australasia, Central America and South Saharan Africa had the greatest concerns about these compared to European regions.

The focus group concerns were also analysed through the WorldRiskIndex, a statistical model that assesses the risk of 193 countries falling victim to humanitarian disasters caused by extreme natural events and climate change. It ranks countries from very low risk through to very high risk. The fear of increased demand for emergency medical services, and disruption to the chain of supplies and health services was directly related to WorldRiskIndex, with concerns growing with increasing risk.

“It is clear from our findings that climate change is expected to have a significant impact on emergency medical services,” said Dr Petrino. “Much greater awareness of this is needed at national and international level among policymakers, healthcare providers, healthcare professionals and the general public.

“The European Society of Emergency Medicine calls for nations to put in place plans to mitigate the impact on our services from climate change. In addition to publishing our findings, the Society will be setting up a permanent working group to support, help and monitor actions for mitigating the effects of climate change on the emergency medical services. We will also be talking to key people and institutions to raise awareness.

“As we head towards the end of a year that has seen records broken for the planet’s hottest days, action cannot come quickly enough. Climate change is having an impact on all countries, rich and poor, regardless of geographical region. The world faces a climate change emergency, and our medical services face an emergency too.”

Prof. Garcia-Castrillo and Dr Petrino thanked the emergency medicine community and societies worldwide, who had made it possible to conduct the survey.

(ends)

[1] “The results of the survey on awareness and preparedness for climate change” presented by Luis Garcia-Castrillo, in the session “EM Day Campaign 2024: climate change is a health emergency too!”, 16:30 hrs CEST, Room D4-D5.

[2] “Awareness and preparedness of health systems and emergency medicine systems to the climate change challenges and threats: an international survey”, by Roberta Petrino, Luis Garcia-Castrillo, Graziano Uccheddu, Letizia Meucci, Roberta Codecà. To be published soon in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The study received no funding.

About European Society of Emergency Medicine (EUSEM)

Voting opens today for the new chair of EUSEP,  the European Society for Emergency Paediatrics, a branch of EUSEM.  A voting link will be sent to Paediatric members, the deadline to vote is Monday 14 October 18:00.

The nomination for the chair is:

Professsor Patrick Van de Voorde

Dear Members,

I have been involved in the paediatric section of EUSEM for many years now. I’ve seen it grow and thrive, developing into a proper society under the umbrella of EUSEM and a strong research branch via REPEM. This is the work of many highly committed people over the years and I find myself lucky to have been among them.

EUSEP is now at a crucial point in its young trajectory as we need to further enlarge our story and find a second generation of enthusiast colleagues to take over. I want to contribute to this as coming chair and pave the way for this future generation.

A society has an important tasks towards its members – and I tend to bring everyone involved into our ‘membership’- in terms of education, research, representation and advocacy. We again need to build capacity for all of this tasks and this is what I intend to do during my presidency so that we have a strong basis to then build on.

EM for children across Europe is provided in many different ways, a reality I understand and respect. Bringing all relevant actors together, and thus liaise with partner societies, is of the utmost importance and one of the clear tasks for the next board.

Finally, from its start EUSEP has been a special one within EUSEM: diverse, out of the box and young at heart. Let’s stay that way…

Truly yours

Patrick

Prof. Van de Voorde CV

The European Society for Emergency Medicine would like to congratulate the Sociedade Portuguesa de Medicina de Urgência e Emergência on obtaining approval for Emergency Medicine to become a specialty in Portugal.

On 23^rd  September 2024, the Assembly of Representatives of the Order of Physicians (OM) approved the new specialty of  Emergency and Urgent Care Medicine. This follows tremendous work by the Portuguese Society in lobbying for the specialty.

The objective now is to start training Emergency Medicine Specialists in early 2025.  A Commission will be setup to see which hospitals can accommodate trainees and the Ministry of Health will be informed so that vacancies can be published as soon as November.

“This is a great day for Emergency Medicine in Europe. Following the recent successes of Spain and the Netherlands, Portugal has continued the drive to have the specialty accepted across the whole of Europe,” said Dr Jim Connolly, President of the European Society for Emergency Medicine. “We are very proud to support the Portuguese Society. We congratulate them on a fantastic outcome, recognising it has been the result of incredible work by the society.”

END

The number of abstracts submitted for presentation at EUSEM 2024 is back to pre-COVID levels according to chair of the congress abstract selection committee, Dr Barbra Backus.

A total of 1228 abstracts were submitted by the main submission deadline on 7 May, and the committee chose 166 for oral presentation, 49 for eposters with five-minute oral presentations (moderated posters) and 839 for presentation as eposters.

Barbra, who has been a member of the abstract selection committee for five years and is also an associate editor of the European Journal of Emergency Medicine, says: “We had a very good number of submissions, and the quality of the research is certainly good.”

This year, the committee is trying a different approach for the abstract presentations in order to mitigate the problem of having large numbers of moderated posters during the breaks between scientific sessions when the attention of participants is often divided between posters, socialising, networking and visiting the exhibition.

“We decided to increase the number of orals and have fewer moderated posters in the hope of improving well-deserved attention for the presenters,” she said. “We have a ‘Best Abstracts’ session on Monday 14 October between 09:00 and 10:30 that is really important. This is for abstracts of high-quality, which have been highly rated during the abstract selection process because of their good methodology, a good sample size, or because they are interesting and very relevant for a broad spectrum of emergency physicians. But of course, all the abstract sessions will be important and interesting for different reasons.

“This year we’ve seen a few more abstracts submitted on artificial intelligence, environmental topics, ‘green’ emergency departments and pollution, which are all important topics. Then there are abstracts on recurring themes such as biomarkers, cardiovascular emergency medicine, geriatrics, neurology and paediatrics that, together with things like trauma care, resuscitation, risk stratification and ultrasound, are all part of our core business. Almost all of these important topics fill at least one full session with abstracts.”

Barbra, who is an emergency physician in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, is now encouraging researchers to submit late breaking abstracts (LBAs) to the congress between 16 and 23 September. She expects approximately 100 to be submitted and about six will be selected for oral presentation.

“Late breaking abstracts need to be innovative, not just an abstract that, for instance, is mainstream, that could have been submitted three months ago but the researchers were too late with their analysis so are submitting as late-breaking. Late-breaking should be ground-breaking. We are keen to see multi-centre abstracts on innovative medicine that is applicable to emergency medicine and physicians, and that can make an impact on the quality of health care provided in emergency departments.”

Barbra concludes: “We have a really good and interesting programme for EUSEM 2024. Although the bigger sessions, with keynote speakers, tend to attract larger audiences, people may be surprised that the oral abstract sessions are just as important in terms of the research quality, innovation and newsworthiness. These studies are our knowledge and practice of the future.”

View the programme here

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