Info

Landspitali emergency department

Emergency Medicine Iceland is a work of emergency physicians working in Iceland's largest emergency department at university hostpital of "Landspitali", located in the capital Reykjavik in south-western Iceland. Our emergency department serves 90.000 patients/year including patients brought from the uninhabited inner highlands and surrounding sea stretching far into the Atlantic. This obviously requires joint efforts with the Icelandic coast guard and prehospital services, mainly through HEMS for which we provide a doctor for 24/7 service. We are about 20 emergency medicine consultants and since 2002 have a 2-year residency program in emergency medicine after which most residents seek abroad for further specialization. Emergency medicine is growing fast in Iceland as young physicians are returning from abroad after having spent years of training in USA, Sweden, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Further information about development of emergency medicine in Iceland is found in this article recently published in EPI Journal, The state of emergency medicine in Iceland in 2013.

Our blog

Our blogsite was started in 2013 and has four main goals;

1. To highlight important and valuable teaching points through real life cases encountered in the ED. The focus is on fast and correct diagnosis and first treatment for stabilizing the acutely sick patient.
   We emphasize the increasingly important use of bedside ultrasound for fast and safe first evaluation and final diagnosis. We encourage our junior doctors (residents) to look for teaching points in common everyday scenarios rather than rarely encountered diseases and present here in co-operation with our local attendings and sometimes other specialties.
2. To introduce the concept of FOAM (Free Online Accessible Meducation) - the use of high quality education found online. Our cases commonly link to what we consider are the most valuable resources online and so we want to help physicians filter out and focus on the best sources ("drinking from the firehose").
3. To introduce the relatively new specialty 'emergency medicine' to colleagues in Iceland.
4. To provide information to foreign physicians who wish to follow developments in emergency medicine in Iceland.

Authors

David Thorisson (main editor): Consultant in emergency medicine since 2012, specialized in Lund, Sweden. Has a special interest in information technology, social media and all things related to modern technology for better clinical practice. Also author of Priceless electrical activity - an EM blog with emphasis on IT and technology.

Graphical design: http://facebook.com/erlingv

Iceland!

More videos from our beautiful Iceland are found in the link on top of this page!

Íslenskur fyrirvari

Áhersla er lögð á að birting tilfella fylgi reglum og venjum um slíkar birtingar og hefur verið lögð mikil vinna í að tryggja að þeim sé fylgt. Engin persónuauðkenni koma fram og upplýsingum sem gætu verið auðkennandi á einhvern hátt oft breytt. Þegar við á eru tilfelli birt í samráði við sjúklinga og/eða aðstandendur. Markmið bloggsíðunnar er eins og áður segir að ræða tilfelli til að allir geti lært af og þannig stuðla að bættum gæðum í sjúklingavinnu á bráðamóttöku og vonandi víðar.
Öllum ábendingum og spurningum er vel tekið, vinsamlegast hafið samband við höfund að ofan.