Emergency Medicine Kwa-Zulu Natal Style

aka Postcards from the Edge 010 Each time we feature a ‘postcard from the edge’ from the somewhat infamous New Zealand-trained emergency physician Dr Sandy Inglis he is somewhere new — we last heard from him as a patient in Italy, now he is back in ancestral lands in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Only 2 months have past in this, the wild west of Emergency Medicine, and yet the drama, the excitement, the frustration and the chaos make it feel like we have been here for years. I am employed here as the Head of Department for Emergency Medicine, plucked from the comfort of Australasian Emergency Medicine (EM) to come to this province of Kwa-Zulu Natal to make some sense of EM here. It is ironic that in this country where trauma kills more people than cancer and where 1200 died on the roads over last Christmas, EM, as a specialty is so undeveloped. I am one of only four EM physicians in this province and the only one in this town, serving a population of over one million. Other parts of the country are relatively flush though and nearly 100 EM physicians exist throughout the country. Academic EM abounds and registrar training is active, but we have a long way to go. “Casualties” are everywhere and, even here, I am at pains to explain to ED and in-patient colleagues alike, that casualty is dead and even ‘A&E’ is a dated term, but old habits die hard. Let me take you through some of what I went through to get here…… Despite being South African, holding a Sou...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Emergency Medicine Featured kwa-zulu natal postcard from the edge sandy inglis South Africa Source Type: blogs