Critical care chronicles: Emergency medicine explained!
Emergency & Critical Care is an exciting topic that challenges the clinician to be prepared and organised for the unexpected arrival of emergency cases. This course will broadly cover coagulation & transfusion medicine; toxicology; shock, fluid therapy & acid/base; CPR; respiratory emergencies; urogenital emergencies; cardiac emergencies; traumatic brain injury & other neurological emergencies and finally trauma. By the end of this course the delegate will be able to confidently manage the emergency patient and apply their knowledge and skills to improve patient outcome.
The course is run by Kerry Doolin and Neus Elias who are both Specialists in Emergency and Critical Care. Neus graduated from The Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in 2009 and then completed a rotating internship at the same University, before working in a referral hospital as an out of hours veterinary surgeon in Barcelona. Neus completed her residency in January 2020 and passed her board exams becoming a European Diplomate of Emergency and Critical Care in September 2020.
Kerry has been an emergency vet for 15 years after graduating from the University of Sydney in 2005. Kerry furthered her training via a speciality emergency and critical care internship at the University of California in Davis followed then by a three year residency in emergency and critical care at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London. In 2019, she passed her specialty exams to become a Diplomat of the American College of Emergency and Critical Care. For the last year she has been working in Sydney as Head of ECC at North Shore Veterinary Specialist and Emergency Centre.
This course runs over a ten-week period and is the equivalent of 12 hours of CPD. It is delivered via video webinars and supplemented with a real-time discussion forum giving you the opportunity to ask questions or discuss cases you may be facing in your practice.
Access to this course is for 12 months from the start of the course going live on our website. The discussion forum will be monitored for the course duration only.
Course Content
- Perform a diagnostic work up of both bleeding and anaemic patients
- Blood typing and cross-matching in dogs and cats
- Red blood cell and plasma product transfusions: how, when and why to use them?
- Identify transfusion reactions and manage them safely
- General approach to toxin exposure
- Diagnostic work up of intoxicated patients
- Treatment of the top 10 most common toxicities
- Classification of shock, causes and how to recognise them
- Understand the pathophysiology of shock
- Work through case based examples of patients in shock
- Become more confident in identifying, assessing and treating shock in your patients
- Different types of fluids and when to use them
- Basic and advanced acid base analysis, and practical use in critically ill cases. How to correct severe abnormalities in acid base?
- Abnormalities in potassium, sodium, chloride and ionised calcium – causes and treatment
- Understand and apply basic life support to patients
- Understand and apply advanced life support to patients
- Review the RECOVER guidelines
- Triage, preparation for respiratory emergencies and oxygen therapy
- Localisation within the respiratory tract
- Treatment of the most common emergencies including BOAS crisis, laryngeal paralysis, pleural space disease, pneumonia and pulmonary contusions
- Triage, common presentations and emergency treatment
- Most common arrhythmias, ECG and treatment
- Emergency management of dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in cats
- Management of the patient with congestive heart failure
- Identify medical and surgical urogenital emergencies
- Understand how to approach common urogenital emergencies (including: urinary obstruction, uroabdomen, pyometra and acute kidney injury).
- Learn how to treat and stabilise common urogenital emergencies (including: urinary obstruction, uroabdomen, pyometra and acute kidney injury).
- Approach to the patient with TBI, treatment and management
- Seizures and status epilepticus – including causes, initial treatment and diagnostics
- Approach to the patient with hepatic encephalopathy, treatment and management
- Other less common emergencies: tetanus, spinal disease, etc
- Managing the trauma patient
- Analgesia of the trauma patient
- Damage control resuscitation including hypotensive resuscitation, haemostatic resuscitation and damage control surgery
Meet the speakers
Kerry Doolin
ECC Specialist
Neus Elias
ECC Specialist