EVIDENCE-BASED EMERGENCY MEDICINE

WORKING GROUP

MINUTES 5/1/2001

Present: Jim Celentano, Peter Dayan, 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 April meeting were reviewed and approved.

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The educational activity of the last meeting was held with the general group after our meeting and was a panel discussion of strategies for teaching EBM to residents. Barney Eskin was one of the panelists for this discussion.

WEBSITE UPDATE

Ben Yeh reports that listserve messages are automatically archived each month and that the archives can now be searched by topic or person. A "Snow White" virus that was found on the listserve was fixed by Peter Morgan, who is responsible for maintaining the NYAM listserves. There is a CAT bank similar to our journal club bank on the Center for Health Evidence (www.cche.net) site.

UPDATE ON NYAM SECTION

Peter Wyer reports that the members present at the last meeting of the section appeared to be satisfied with the activities of the section. The section's activities since its founding in 1992 had included arranging lectures and collaborating with Metrocord. The recent reaffirmation of our participation in the section may result in accelerating setting up a separate account for our funds. That the section will list our activities as part of the section will give us a larger profile. As mentioned last month, plans for setting up a listserve for the section are in progress. Ben Yeh is going to be the list master and this may require his coming to some of the section meetings.

NEW BUSINESS

FUTURE PEDIATRIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE WORKSHOPS

Peter Dayan reports that the American Academy of Pediatrics contacted him regarding the workshop that he gave for pediatric emergency medicine fellows last year and that they are interested in his running more pediatric worshops in the future. The cost for running the workshop last year was about $1400, and sources of funding for future workshops would have to be found.

PLANNING FOR THE 2002 WORKSHOP

Jim Celentano reports that he faxed the room requirements to Roberta and Claudette, who work with Ann Boehme at NYAM. He will follow up with them to get an estimate of the cost for the rooms and food within the next week. We need to remind Ann that the room rates should reflect the fact that we are a section of NYAM.

A charge of $800 per person for 32 participants means we would have a budget of $25,600 to work with. The budget for the workshop needs to include honoraria ($1000 per out of town tutor) and expenses for the out of town tutors (probably 2), hotel rooms (possibly around $3000), a brochure, and the NYAM fees for use of the library, copying and computer room as well as the room charges and food expenses. This needs to be decided upon before we can decide whether we have sufficient funds to hire a coordinator for about $7000 (which would include the expenses for the brochure, advertising and the extra person for copying during the workshop). Although we anticipate that the room charge at the Hotel Wales will probably be about $250 per person per night, we need to work out the exact rate with the hotel. Our negotiations with the hotel will include the fact that many of the participants will also require accommodations during the workshop.

The next step in deciding on the budget is to include all expenses with their estimates and circulate it to the members of the working group.

Peter Wyer suggests that we ought to organize a resource package for computer searching during the workshop. Since Rosanne Leipzig arranged for free trial packages from providers such as Ovid, the Cochrane Collaboration, Up-to-Date, MDConsult and Best Evidence (British Medical Journal), we ought to contact her about this. Steve Emond has analyzed the Cochrane Collaboration metaanalyses and shown that 15% of them are directly relevant to emergency medicine and another 20% are indirectly relevant. We also need to contact Rob Hayward at the Centres for Health Evidence; that site (www.cche.net) has resources that have been used during Society for General Internal Medicine EBM workshops. In Canada CCHE will set up desktops and customize them, but we do not know if this can be done in the US. We should also consider Emergency Medicine Abstracts and inquire as to whether we can get a password for this for the workshop.

We need to design a brochure and mail it out with a cover letter to program directors of EM residencies. The participants will probably be limited to attending physicians at teaching programs, although we might make exceptions in unusual circumstances for residents. Peter Dayan has names of applicants who were on the waitlist for the previous workshop.

We have a list of librarians whom we could offer participation in the workshop.

HAND-HELD DEVICES AND EBM

Ben Yeh reports that Dr. Jaminas contacted him for help putting CATs from his institutionally-centered journal club bank on a hand-held device.

SUMMER MEETING SCHEDULE

Ben Yeh reports that he has a program that allows conference calls via the internet. He will circulate the details of this with an eye to possibly having meetings during July and August using this modality.

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, June 5th. Food will be available. An educational presentation will follow at 6:30 PM consisting of a panel discussion on the topic, "Teaching & Implementing EBM in Medical School Education: What Works and What Doesn't."

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 7:25 PM

Respectfully submitted

Barney Eskin