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Emergency Life Support course and SAJEM launched

By Muhammad Qasim
November 04, 2018

Islamabad : Emergency Medicine Advisory Group and Pakistan Society of Emergency Medicine organised a simple ceremony to launch two initiatives, the Emergency Life Support (ELS) course and the inauguration of Pakistan’s first journal of emergency medicine, South Asian Journal of Emergency Medicine (SAJEM).

Emergency medicine is an emerging and much important field that deals with the care of illnesses or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. The emergency medicine specialists manage patients of all ages with all sorts of diseases as the first-line care providers.

College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan started the training of emergency medicine in 2010 in two institutions in Pakistan which has grown into seven institutions now and five doctors have passed FCPS in emergency medicine.

The ceremony was attended by eminent physicians from the emergency medicine community of Pakistan, the CPSP counsellor and health experts from Australia where Emergency Life Support (ELS) course was designed by Australian emergency physicians for the rural Australia and later on the course was tailored for the low resource countries.

In the ceremony, the journal of Emergency Medicine called SAJEM (South Asian Journal of Emergency Medicine) was inaugurated that according to organizers would seek to present cutting edge research on the topic of Emergency Medicine especially for the perspective of south east Asia. The ceremony was also the inauguration of ELS course.

Pakistan Society of Emergency Medicine (PSEM) was created in 2017 and it serves to create awareness regarding this important field. In collaboration with PSEM, the foreign experts want to train local emergency doctors in matters where time and life becomes the most precious and the most at stake.

Professor Abdul Bari, the chief guest of the ceremony praised the PSEM for their struggle to bring the Emergency Medicine in the forefront. Dr. Khawaja Junaid Mustafa, General Secretary of PSEM and Dean Faculty of Emergency Medicine at CPSP thanked distinguished guests and the Australian consultants including Dr. Farida Khawaja for sparing their time to teach ELS course in Pakistan.

Dr Aysha, Executive from Emergency Medicine Advisory Group, informed the audience that the advisory group is going to support all Emergency Medicine activities in Pakistan like it has taken the initiative of becoming the publisher of SAJEM.

Dr. Alan Tankel from Australia informed attendees of the importance of the course and the impact it has created in low resource countries. Dr. Abdus Salam Khan, President of the PSEM shared the history of society and the struggle that emergency physicians are going through. He stressed on the importance of the team work and collaboration to provide the quality emergency care and also importance of understanding about the golden hour of treatment. The CPSP counsellor Dr. Shoaib Shafi informed the audience of the role of CPSP in developing Emergency Medicine. He said that persistent struggle and continued support of CPSP enabled the Emergency Medicine to start flourishing. He informed that the CPSP is negotiating with various entities in UK and Ireland so that the trainees can go there to learn and come back to serve the country.