WTBS 24 What We Should Learn From the First Wave of COVID-19
COVID-19 is the greatest challenge our healthcare system has faced in a century. Let’s make sure we learn fast, and learn the right things, to get ready for the next challenge...
WTBS 22 The End of The Beginning: What’s Next for EDs in the COVID-19 Pandemic?
In this month's Waiting to Be Seen blog Dr. Howard Ovens explores The End of The Beginning: What’s Next for EDs in the Pandemic? Many questions have arisen now that we are a few months into the pandemic in North America: How long will ED volumes remain low? What will happen as hospital services ramp up? Will staff get tired of precautions? Will PPE supplies be maintained? What will happen during flu season? What mitigation strategies are available to us? Dr. Ovens explains how we must maintain vigilance in our EDs and not let our guards down. COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon...
Ep 139 COVID-19 Part 3 – PPE: What We Know, Conservation Strategies and Protected Code Blue
The single most important thing we can do as ED providers in this COVID pandemic is to protect ourselves, our colleagues, our patients, our families and our friends against transmission of the virus; and there is no higher risk of transmission that during the resuscitation of a sick COVID patient. In this podcast we speak with a world expert on PPE, Dr. Laurie Mazurik about protecting against transmission of the virus before, during and after your shift. Not only do we discuss the details of all PPE from head protection to footwear, but we give tips on the equally important non-PPE protection as well. We touch on PPE conservation strategies as we struggle with supplies, give you the bottom line on donning/doffing sequencing, and discuss the core principles of the protected code blue...
Preparation for Emergency Infectious Outbreak in your ED – Coronavirus
The current outbreak of the novel respiratory pathogen Coronavirus is an opportunity to remind ourselves of how to properly and adequately prepare for an emergency outbreak in our EDs. Although the mortality rate in patients with Coronavirus in this outbreak is less than 1% (which pales in comparison to Ebola or SARS), historically these types of outbreaks have occured every 5-6 years (SARS 2003, HINI 2009, Ebola 2014, Coronavirus 2020), so they are somewhat predictable and we should know how to prepare for them in our EDs. In this special edition EM Cases podcast Dr. Megan Landes, a Global Health expert, researcher and EM educator runs us through how to best practically prepare our EDs for an outbreak like Coronavirus...
A Rational Approach to Emergency Ebola Preparedness
In this special 15 minute EM Cases podcast on Ebola preparedness we bring you an interview with Professor Howard Ovens, the director of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. As an EM physician who took care of many SARS patients and the chief of the ED during the SARS outbreak, Dr. Ovens has a very rational approach to how to prepare our emergency departments for patients who present with fever who have been traveling in an Ebola outbreak region, including triaging and personal protective equipment (PPE).