SGEM Xtra: Happy New Year 2021

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Date: January 7th, 2021

Happy New Years to all the SGEMers. I know 2020 has been a bit of a dumpster fire. We have all faced challenges During the COVID19 global pandemic. I tried not to contribute to the large volume of information coming out on Sars-Cov2.

There were only four episodes that directly addressed COVID19:

SGEM Xtra: Mask4All Debate
SGEM#229: Learning to Test for COVID19
SGEM Xtra: CAEP National Grand Rounds – COVID19 Treatments
SGEM#309: That’s All Joe Asks of You – Wear a Mask

There have been many other FOAMed resources (REBEL EM, First10EM, EM Cases, St. Emlyn’s, and others) that have done a great job covering the pandemic.

This is an SGEM Xtra episode to announce a few exciting new things for 2021.

SGEM Continuing Medical Education Credits

The BIG news is that the SGEM will now be offering Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits for all SGEM episodes. Click on this LINK to find out more.

The Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine (SGEM) is part of the Free Open Access to Meducation movement (FOAMed). The SGEM tries to cut the knowledge translation window down from over ten years to less than one year with the power of social media. The ultimate goal is for patients to get the best care, based on the best evidence.

The FOAMed philosophy is that the information should be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere at no cost. This is similar to the philosophy of emergency medicine. It is the light in the house of medicine that is always on for anyone, at anytime, for anything. The SGEM has been free since it started in 2012 and will always be free open access.

Many of you have asked about getting CME credits for listening to the SGEM podcast and reading the SGEM blog. We know physicians (MD and DO), Nurse Practitioners (NP) and Physician Assistants (PA) have to collect so many CME credit hours for their respective professional organizations. This can be more challenging with the cancelation of in-person conferences and meetings.

The SGEM Hot Off the Press (SGEMHOP) episodes which are published once a month do offer CME credits. However, you can only claim these credits if you are a member of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). This new initiative will allow anyone to claim CME credits for all of the SGEM episodes.

Getting CME credits for the weekly SGEM episodes is something I have been wanting to do for years. The barriers to getting CME credits for the SGEM before now was that it takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money to get accreditation. The cancellation of in-person conferences due to COVID19 has been the push I needed to finally get this service added to the SGEM.

This project has been made possible through a partnership with a Legend of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Richard Bukata, and his Center for Medical Education (CCME) company. CCME has been providing providing medical education in the form of audio programs and conferences since 1977. They have the infrastructure to provide this type of service. They also have an arrangement to get the CME credits at a very reasonable price.

Sign up by January 31st, 2021:

There can be only one…

The SGEM CME program offers up to 26 credits (1 credit hour per SGEM episode) over 6 months for only $195. If you sign up before January 31st, 2021 we will also give you 26 credits for free. This will be the previous six months of SGEM content that has already been approved for CME credits. Basically it is a 50% off promotion to kick start the SGEM CME program.

Signing up for your education credits is easy. This is because “there can be only one” subscription option. You can earn up to 26 credit hours in six months. The price is $195 ($7.50/credit hour) for the six months. Again, those that sign up by January 31st, 2021 will receive a bonus 26 CME credits for free. That makes it only $3.75 for every credit hour of SGEM content!. It is as easy as 1-2-3 to start earning your CME credit today. Just click on the picture of the Highlander for all the details.

SGEM Season#7 Book

The SGEM continues to grow and has approximately 51,000 subscribers. It would not be so successful without the wonderful people like you who listen to the podcast and read the blog every week.

I would also like to thank the SGEMHOP Team (Drs. Bond, Heitz and Morgenstern), PaperinaPic creator (Dr. Challen), all the guest skeptics and my best friend Chris Carpenter.

The SGEM Season#7 book was put together with the help of my daughter Sage Milne. She came up with the steam punk theme and drew all the artwork for the book. The cover art was inspired by the 1982 movie TRON. She knows very well how much I like 1980’s movies and music. Sage is currently doing doing a degree in Global Health Studies at Huron University College.

Here are links to all six season of the SGEM as PDF books. You can download each season by clicking on the link: Season#1, Season#2, Season#3, Season #4, Season#5 and Season#6

If you are looking for the amazing theme music that helps with the KT for each SGEM episode, you can find them on Spotify. Most of the music comes from the 1980’s because it is clearly the best musical era.

New SGEMHOP Faculty

We are pleased to announce two new wonderful additions to the SGEM Hot Off the Press faculty: Dr. Kirsty Challen and Dr. Lauren Westafer. The SGEMHOP is done in collaboration with Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). SAEM publishes the journal Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM).

SGEMHOP Five Step Process:

A paper that has been submitted, peer-reviewed, and ultimately accepted for publication in AEM is selected by the SGEMHOP faculty and made available free open access.
We put our skeptical eye upon the manuscript using a standard critical appraisal tool to probe the paper for its validity and publish an SGEM blog of the paper.
One of the authors of the paper is invited on the SGEM podcast, available on iTunes, Google Play and Spotify, as our guest to answer a number (5 or 10) nerdy questions to help us better understand the research.
The SGEM audience gets a chance to interact with the author by posting comments and question on the SGEM blog.
The best social media feedback will be published along with a summary of the SGEMHOP episode in a subsequent issue of AEM.

Dr. Kirsty Challen

Dr. Kirsty Challen (@KirstyChallen) is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medicine Research Lead at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust (North West England). She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate training in North West England, acquiring a History of Medicine BSc, and has a PhD in Health Services Research. She is Chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Women in Emergency Medicine group, and involved with the RCEM Public Health and Informatics groups. Kirsty regards her inner toddler as a great asset to medicine and finds #FOAMEd very helpful in answering “but WHY?” She is also the creator of the wonderful infographics called #PaperinaPic. When not at work she is happiest out running on a muddy mountain.

Dr. Lauren Westafer

Lauren Westafer, DO, MPH, MS (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School – Baystate and Director of the Emergency Medicine Research Fellowship. Lauren is an implementation science researcher and FOAMed enthusiast. She is the author of the blog, The Short Coat, and cofounder of the emergency medicine podcast, FOAMcast. She lectures internationally on social media in medical education, critical appraisal and journal club design, pulmonary embolism, and advancing the quality of healthcare for LGBTQI+ patients. In addition, she serves as the Social Media Editor and a research methodology editor for Annals of Emergency Medicine and an Associate Editor for the NEJM Journal Watch Emergency Medicine.

We are very excited to have both of these talented physicians and educators as part of the SGEMHOP faculty.

The SGEM will be back next episode doing a structured critical appraisal of a recent publication and will continue trying and to cut the knowledge translation window down from over ten years to less than one year using the power of social media. Ultimately we want patients to get the best care, based on the best evidence.

One last thing. Could you please write a review of the SGEM podcast on iTunes, like the SGEM on Facebook and follow the SGEM on Twitter? Thank you for your ongoing support of the SGEM and all the best in 2021.