The Field, Emergency and Wilderness (FEW) Medicine Society held its first meeting on 18 May. More than 30 students from both the MBBS and MD programmes attended the meeting. The aim of the society is to be a platform for all students who wish to expand their knowledge and skills in these exceptional and exciting fields of medicine.
The meeting started with Josh Wesfield, a CS Year and secretary of the society, sharing some of his experience as a medic in Israel. Then Dr George Athanasiou, A&E doctor at Larnaca General Hospital and faculty advisor of the society gave an informative and interesting overview of the field of emergency medicine, its history and practice. He stressed the importance of emergency medicine and the challenging situations an A&E physician is involved with and he shared some anecdotal stories.
After a short break, students practiced on information gathering in an A&E setting. It is an important skill as in the emergency setting, as you do not have time for a full medical check-up and history taking but you must make fast diagnosis and decisions! The meeting concluded with a discussion on the options for proper first aid training through St. Johns. The feedback from the first meeting was very positive.
The second meeting took place on 30 May, with the participation of more than 30 students. This time, the topic moved from emergency medicine to field medicine going over Basic Life Support. Dr Athanasiou gave a review on how to perform basic CPR outside the hospital setting, emphasizing the fact that “good Advance Life Support starts with a good Basic Life Support!”. Afterwards CS students Josh and Nadav gave a quick overview for Infant CPR and then everybody had the chance to practice adult, child and infant manikins. FEW MS concluded its meetings for this academic year on 14 June covering wilderness issues.