Emergency Medicine is thriving in Singapore

S E M S O n l i n e N e w s l e t t e r

I s s u e 2 0 0 7

Emergency Medicine thriving in Singapore

One of the real pleasures of my role as a clinician/ researcher/ educator is the opportunity to participate in national and regional scientific meetings outside Australia and share ideas and experiences with nursing and medical colleagues, particularly from the Asia-Pacific region. My week in Singapore recently was quite special. The 8^th SEMS meeting was vibrant, exciting and cutting edge. It was great to see so many participants, despite it causing headaches for the organising team! Particularly pleasing was the mix of medical and nursing colleagues and of senior and junior staff, as well as the visitors from Thailand and Malaysia. After all, Emergency Medicine is a team sport so learning and discussing together is essential to better practices.

The program was carefully thought out and well balanced and the local and guest speakers were all very good. I have great pleasure in saying that the session I led on research was one of the most fun talks I have ever given. The audience was clearly very interested and also very well informed. You could almost see the research ideas bubbling up as we went along! If the comments and questions I received afterwards are anything to go by, there should be a good crop of clinical research projects across the disciplines ready for the 2010 international meeting being hosted in Singapore .

As well as the conference, I had the opportunity to visit some of the local emergency departments. Many of our challenges are similar and some are quite different. I was especially interested in the processes that have been developed around proactive management of potential infectious disease. I have brought my learnings home and am educating my hospital executive about the wisdom of your approaches.

Of course my visit was not all work. I really enjoyed exploring Little India and Chinatown ; not so much for the shopping as for the sights and smells. I love to explore. Due to the excellent hospitality, I also had some special experiences – dinner at a hawker centre, tea ceremony in a traditional tea house and a visit to the night safari. All were wonderful and my sincere thanks to my hosts for these experiences.

Emergency Medicine in Singapore is truly thriving! It was a pleasure to participate in your meeting and to share ideas. I hope to visit again soon.

Dr Ann-Maree Kelly

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The Society for Emergency Medicine in Singapore c/o Department of Emergency Medicine

Singapore General Hospital, Outram Road, S169608

Phone +65 63213558 Fax +65 63214873