Drs. Aram Shemmassian, Nishan Shah, Gabriel Cade and Brian Hagan Brought Home the Silver in National SimWars

A team of Baystate's Emergency Medicine residents matched up against seven other teams in a national SimWars competition at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting in Chicago on May 9-12, 2012. The SimWars competition allows residency programs from across the U.S. to demonstrate their skills in the management of simulated cases.

The eight elite teams, culled from 80 applicants, competed two at a time in front of an audience of their colleagues/peers. Using high fidelity patient simulators, teams completed three challenging scenarios while being judged on medical care skills, teamwork, and communication.

The Baystate team's scenarios were:

• 14 year-old with acute anaphylaxis disguised as sepsis
• 9 month-old with congenital prolonged QT syndrome and hypovolemic shock
• rare methemoglobinemia presentation from internet drug purchase.

Within each scenario, teams also had to triage other patients, call consults, deal with family members, and deflect the patient's own primary care team—all within 8 minutes.

This article was published in the June 2012 Academics@Baystate newsletter.