EVIDENCE-BASED EMERGENCY MEDICINE

WORKING GROUP

MINUTES 4/3/2001

Present: Jim Celentano, Peter Dayan, Barney Eskin, Phil Hubel.

The meeting was called to order at 4:15 PM by Barney Eskin.

OLD BUSINESS

The March meeting had been cancelled. Minutes of the February meeting were reviewed and approved.

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

2000 WORKSHOP

Peter Dayan has prepared a summary of the evaluations from the workshop. He plans on emailing the results to those who attended this meeting and having Peter Wyer present the results at the EBM interest group meeting in Atlanta in May.

TREASURER UPDATE REPORT

Phil Hubel reports no further progress on setting up a separate account for our group with NYAM.

WEBSITE UPDATE

Ben Yeh is in the process of setting up the archive of listserve messages.

UPDATE ON NYAM SECTION

Peter Wyer reports that the section met on February 28th and laid plans for restoring active leadership over the section, adhering to the original mission and orientation for the group. The section, headed by Neal Flomenbaum, will continue to serve as an independent resource for facilitation projects and educational initiatives. The group also expressed interest in setting up a listserve along the lines of our own at NYAM to facilitate project development within the region in the general area of emergency medicine, and Ben Yeh has agreed to serve as a facilitator for this and work with NYAM to accomplish this.

NEW BUSINESS

NYAM WORKSHOP FOR 2001

The internal medicine group will not be holding a formal workshop this fall. However, Eleanor Wallace is hoping to arrange a group of sessions for practicing internists in EBM held over 4 evenings 1-2 weeks apart.

PLANNING FOR THE 2002 WORKSHOP

A proposed schedule for the 2002 workshop was formulated. It was felt that the introductory lecture during the dinner the first night should include telling the participants the format of the workshop and alerting them to what will happen during the tutorials and other sessions. Peter Dayan told us that he thought that the format that he used for his workshop last year for Peds-EM fellows formulating the clinical question and searching the literature was very successful because it was interactive. We will include introductory sessions following this format during the morning of the second day of the workshop. In addition, we will make it clear to the participants that during "free" times, they are encouraged to meet with the tutors, tutor-trainees and librarians to get help with any aspects of the workshop.

Our plan for deciding on the fee for the workshop will be to determine the cost of the workshop (room charges, food, computer charges, copying expenses, expenses associated with out-of-town tutors, etc.) first. Jim Celentano will be contacting NYAM about this (our room rates should reflect the fact that emergency medicine is a section of NYAM). Assuming that a fee for the workshop of about $800 would not be unreasonable, we would then decide whether we can afford to hire a coordinator to help set up the workshop. Since the coordinator will likely cost about $7000, for 32 participants this amounts to an additional charge of about $220 per participant. Peter Dayan noted that he had carried out the worshop last year for 8 Peds-EM fellows at Columbia-Presbyterian without the help of a coordinator.

EDUCATION AT FUTURE WORKING GROUP MEETINGS

We plan on having educational sessions at future meetings. Ideas for these are solicited. We will choose among the ideas received and will use one of them for the educational session at the next monthly meeting.

HAND-HELD DEVICES AND EBM

Phil Hubel has programmed a hand-held computer device (eg., Palm Pilot) using Avant Go software to include text from the users' guides and journal club bank. He has also loaded an application that allows computation of confidence intervals.

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, May 1st. Food will be available. An educational presentation will follow at 6:30 PM. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 5:25 PM Respectfully submitted

Barney Eskin