EVIDENCE-BASED EMERGENCY MEDICINE

WORKING GROUP

MINUTES 12/5/00

Present: Jim Celentano, Peter Dayan, Steve Emond, Barney Eskin, Peter Wyer and Ben Yeh.

The meeting was called to order at 5:15 PM by Peter Wyer.



OLD BUSINESS

Minutes of the November meeting were reviewed and approved.

Y2K EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

NYAM WORKSHOP 2000

Peter Dayan reported that the participants evaluated the didactic lectures as being fair to good; few were deemed excellent. Overall the conference was judged favorably. Additional comments from participants included the following: the tutors were not as knowledgeable as they were expected to be; there was too much talking; and the participants did not like the emphasis on internal medicine in the large group sessions. One participant felt that the statistical analysis was not at as high a level as expected. Since a similar comment was voiced by 1999 workshop participant, we think that we ought to forewarn the participants that these workshops are not intended to be statistically oriented. Barney Eskin was given the task of compiling the evaluations of the conference in a systematic way.

There are some funds that still need to be disbursed. Peter Dayan will contact Ann Boehme about this.

WEB SITE

Ben Yeh reported that there have been many applications to join the listserve and journal club bank (to date, more than 50 have registered for each). However, there is not much talk on the listserve. Ben Yeh will archive both past and future listserve messages. He will also post the topics discussed on the listserve on the web site. Consideration was given to linking our site to that of Eddy Lang at McGill (www.emed.org). Discussion ensued about possible uses for the other domain names that we own, namely ebem.net and ebem.com.

UPDATE ON THE EMERGENCY MEDICINE SECTION AT NYAM

Peter Wyer reported that Neal Flomenbaum, chair of the Emergency Medicine Section of NYAM, wants to set up a steering committee to coordinate activities of the section. This committee would include representatives of the working group, the NY chapter of ACEP (which holds some meetings at NYAM), Metrocord, and SAEM. Tom Kwiatkowski's name was mentioned as a possible member of the committee.

NEW BUSINESS

GRANT PLANNING AND THE 2002 WORKSHOP

We are planning to offer a workshop just for Emergency Medicine in the spring of 2002. The number of participants was discussed. Since this would be the first workshop that we run independently of the internal medicine group, we decided 32 would be optimal. Applying for the EMF/SAEM "Innovations in Medical Education Research Grant" was discussed. The application is available at the following site:

http://www.acep.org/index.cfm/pid/205.htm

Barney Eskin will coordinate this. Tasks that need to be completed to apply for the grant include:

1. Barney needs to prepare a task list and timeline and make a decision about which steps are limiting.

2. On the application, the name of the institution receiving the funds would be NYAM and the fiscal officer, Ann Boehme. We would need a statement from NYAM that they support the workshop.

3. To increase the probability of success, the application should:

(a) Include the names of the academic institutions supporting the working group. Peter Wyer suggested that we try adding other academic institutions to the list and Jim Celentano will contact Lincoln about this.

(b) Include the fact that we have had ACEP CME credit for the workshops over the past 3 years.

4. Peter Wyer will discuss room charges with the executive VP at NYAM, Alan Fleishman. Information about room charges for previous workshops should be available from information compiled by Kathel Dunn. Since emergency medicine is a section of NYAM, it is possible that the room charges for us might be less than for the previous workshops at NYAM. However, the grant we are applying for specifically prohibits additional administrative costs to be given to NYAM for hosting the workshop.

5. Administrative help: Pat Gallagher was the administrator for the previous workshop; about 6 months of her time was assigned to this. Since our conference will be about one-third the size of that workshop, we would probably need less help. Qin Qin Wen, Jim Celentano's spouse, is interested in providing this service; the fee would probably be around $7000-$10,000, depending on the amount of work required. We would also need 1 or 2 additional people during the workshop itself for copying, manning the reception area, etc.

6. Jim Celentano will determine the dates of other events occurring in the spring of 2002 and will pick out the best dates for the workshop.

7. Title and goals of the workshop: the goal is faculty development and expanding EBM capabilities of faculty. We will ask Steve Miller, a tutor trainee at the last workshop, for help deciding on the title of the grant to optimize the chances for getting it. Steve has had previous success in writing grant proposals. We will also ask Steve about the importance of including methods of evaluating the success of the workshop to getting funding. In this regard, we ought to ask Rosanne Leipzig if she compiled the results of the evaluations from the previous workshops, including the contracts signed by the participants at the end of the workshops.

8. Ilene Willets volunteered to help with writing the grant. She has written grant proposals before. We need to ask her several questions:

(a) Whom should we designate on the application as the "Chair/Director of Emergency Medicine" and "Emergency Medicine Chair/Director"? We think Neal Flomenbaum fit both these descriptions.

(b) Would it be better to have the application come from an NY academic ED rather than NYAM?

(c) Would it be useful to review the grant application that Rosanne Leipzig submitted to get her current grant? If so, since Ilene works in the same institution as Rosanne, we would ask her to get a copy.

(d) How many coinvestigators should we include and who should they be? What would they be expected to contribute to the application process and to running the grant if we were successful?

9. In the introduction we should mention the recent mandate from CORD that EBM be included in the curriculum for residents and the recent decision by ABEM to include a test of ability to read the literature in its recertification process. We could also propose that the modules developed for the workshop could be used as templates for this process.

To save mailing costs, we could post the modules electronically on our website. Steve Emond has electronic access to about 1000 journals and can download pdf files of papers in those journals. We would need to password-protect that part of the website and give out the password to participants once they have paid for the course.

USERS' GUIDES

The users' guides are being compiled in revised form as a book and will be posted on the Centers for Health Evidence site (www.cche.net).

The next monthly meeting will be held at the NY Academy of Medicine, 1215 Fifth Avenue (at 103rd St.) at

5:15 PM on Tuesday, January 2nd. Food will be available.



There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 7:45 PM

Respectfully submitted


Barney Eskin