BadEM

What if your project cut inpatient deaths by 31% in the facilities that adopted it? That’s exactly what Karima Khalid and her co-founders achieved with Essential Emergency and Critical Care (EECC) in Tanzania.

Too many people were dying because they didn’t get basic emergency and critical care. That care costs little, and in most cases it’s already available in health facilities at every level around the world.

In the latest episode of the badEM podcast, Karima tells us how she and her team started, grew and scaled EECC. Today it’s a powerful example of what years of consistent, good work can achieve. Their work was recently recognised with the inaugural Lancet–Elsevier Foundation Evidence to Impact Award.

In healthcare - context matters. One cannot take building blocks and manufacture them in a certain way to get a working system. One has to rather get a building block and treat it like a sculpture that one chisels away at over time, moulding it to work for you.

Uganda is a unique place with a unique set of needs. Listen to this month's episode to find out how Joseph Kalanzi (and many others) are sculpting Emergency Medicine to fill a much needed gap specific to their own needs.

Emergency Medicine has grown in South Africa over the last 20 years, but not equally in all provinces. The Eastern Cape is a complex, relatively low resource setting, where Dr Sian Geraty and Dr Luan Taljaardhave been working for years to drive access to quality Emergency Care.

How to achieve it - look after human capital, build relationships and show up every day with the right attitude towards improvement. These notions are evidence by the steady growth of the EM mindset in the region over the recent years, and even more potential in the pipeline.

"When an aeroplane crashes, everybody — including the pilot — dies. But when a healthcare worker makes a mistake, it's only the patient who dies."

It's with this sobering thought that we introduce Dr John Roos on the latest episode of the badEM podcast. John is a specialist anaesthetist at Mitchells Plain Hospital who has spent much of his career studying how mistakes happen — and how to stop them.

We explore Crew Resource Management (CRM) — a concept born in aviation that aims to reduce the human factors behind negative outcomes. From communication, to leadership and followership, to fatigue and burnout, we cover a lot of ground.

John has shaped countless minds over his long and winding career, and his wisdom shines through in this conversation.



Find info about his course "Human Factors Masterclass" - by emailing jaqvrey@iafrica.com

Transforming dangerous "Red Zones" where EMS staff put their lives at risk, but where innocent patients face delays due to inequitable access, into green corridors through community lead engagement.
Improving the quality of paediatric transfers through education, simulation and reflection.
Advocating for EMS through context driven discourse on a policy making level.


All this and more in this diverse episode with the trailblazing Athenkosi Sobada