I recently attended the Rocky Mountain Winter Conference on Emergency Medicine as a speaker in the resident lecture competition. The competition itself was a great opportunity to take a deep dive into the specifics of presentation skills. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed preparing for the talk and by how excited I am regarding future prospects of this type of non-clinical teaching. The conference itself was very casual and a validation of my decision to pursue emergency medicine as a career. I can’t imagine another specialty that would have a nationally known physician give a talk about a paradigm shifting approach to MI while wearing ski-pants aside from emergency medicine. I was also able to attend talks about the practical approach to refractory vfib, the AICD, and ultrasound in cardiac arrest. Given my interest in ultrasound, I chose to focus on much of the ultrasound content. The highlight of this for me was a lecture by Joseph Novik regarding the use of transesophageal echocardiography in the emergency department which dovetailed nicely with my recent elective time spent learning TEE in the operating room at NMH. I was able to meet further with Dr. Novik as well as with other ultrasound fellowship directors later during the conference as well.
PGY3 Matt McCauley