During one not particularly sunny weekend in the middle of April, nearly a hundred students from the faculty of medicine of Masaryk´s University gathered together for one common goal – to improve their knowledge of saving lives under the urgent circumstances. The annual Course of Emergency Medicine (KUM) was about to begin.
On early Saturday morning, the tutors and volunteers began to set up everything necessary for a weekend full of presentations, lectures and, most importantly, workshops, where students were about practice everything by themselves.
Following the opening ceremony, there was time for the first speaker Assoc.Prof. Petr Štourač MD, Ph.D., the Head of Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Resuscitation He expressed his gratitude to all the students for their interest in this extracurricular activity and also thanked Prof. Martin Bareš, MD, Ph.D., the Dean of the Faculty, for a long-term patronage. The word was given to Prof. Roman Gál MD, Ph.D., the Head of Clinic of Anesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Medicine, University Hospital in Brno, who reminded students that KUM is a unique opportunity for students to get clinical knowledge from professionals. The rest of the day was split into two segments: general and specialized know-how lectures. As expected, students have learnt a bit of everything important from the emergency medicine department.
A welcomed surprise was the arrival of a fire department unit with heavy machinery. The firemen have shown students how challenging is to rescue people out of a crashed car using hydraulic forceps.
On Sunday, the students were divided into eight groups of ten people to rotate through every workshop station. The participants had to master the difficult airway management and advanced life support for children and adults. They had a chance to practice helping with out of hospital child delivery , putting in a chest tube and some „outdoor activities“, such as rescuing people from a car accident and stabilizing and fixating fractures.
It wouldn’t really be an emergency medicine course if students didn't get a chance to cannulate veins on themselves. Last but not least, there was a station aimed to handle multitasking under time pressure of mass causality incident in a simulated flooding.
This year, the AKUTNĚ.CZ competition was on again! The participants turned into a first aid crew. They were supposed to threat a patient, who was experiencing nausea after physical exertion. Their task was to perform a differential diagnosis and to direct the patient to an appropriate treatment center. All the contestants were full of enthusiasm and hungry for triumph, but there could be only one winner.
In the end, the students received not only a certificate of course completion, but also a number of memorable experiences and skills, from which they can benefit in their professional lives. The course span across a wide range of different experiences but there was one thing that held it all together - joy and dedication of both the tutors and the students. We would like to thank all speakers, tutors, volunteers, participants and IT support specialist for providing this great experience and we are looking forward to performing the jubilee 10 th Emergency Medicine Course in the year 2020.
