Resuscitationist lessons from a self-protection master

It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it

My great friend and fellow Brit Lee Morrison is in Sydney again, teaching people how to save lives. Like a resuscitationist. But Lee isn’t a health care worker. He is a professional self protection instructor and martial athlete. The lives he is teaching people to save are their own and those of their friends and families. Lee has travelled the world and taught a diverse range of professionals including law enforcement and military special forces personnel. His current world tour will include the Czech Republic, USA, France, Russia and Germany after Australia.
What does this have to do with resuscitation? In my experience, almost everything. Hitting someone in self defence is technically very easy. Doing a resuscitative hysterotomy is technically very easy. Being able to do either of those things under stress can be difficult or impossible for some people.
Those who strive to understand and cultivate the Mind of the Resuscitationist know the importance of preparation through simulation under stress; the need to acknowledge and control the physiological and emotional response to stress; the necessity to train outside ones comfort zone and minimise the gap between simulated and real situations by optimising the cognitive fidelity of training scenarios; and the requirement to access the right mental state in an instant in which failure is not considered to be an option.
People who do not wish to witness the discussion or demonstration of violence or who cannot stand swearing should stop now. Those of you who want to see mastery in action watch the video below of Lee teaching in Germany.

I want you to appreciate the following:

  • Presentation style – how to connect with an audience and fully engage them through humour, passion, emphasis, intelligent discourse, and detailed explanations that connect emotionally and physically as well as intellectually.
  • The loss of fine motor skill under stress (2 min 13 sec)
  • The mindset of determination (2 min 48 sec) – consider how this relates to the perspective of the resuscitationist prepared to do a resuscitative thoracotomy under stress
  • How to influence and win arguments in a conflict situation by being assertive but providing a face-saving get-out for the aggressor. I have applied this multiple times in the resus room and in retrieval situations. (4 min 11 sec)
  • Training honestly – maintaining safety but ‘doing it like you f—-ing mean it’. Get out of your comfort zone and make the discomfort as real as possible. (7 min 37 sec)
  • How to minimise the gap between your training and what you’re training for, when legal, moral, and safety restrictions prevent you from doing the actual task for real as a training exercise. Using fatigue, pain, and disorientation as perturbations so you learn to recognise and mitigate their effects. (9 min 19 sec)
  • Accessing a single mental state that provides focus and prevents distraction from discomfort (11 min 40 sec)

If the video made you feel uncomfortable ask yourself why. If it’s because you consider yourself to be above violence and find the subject matter, language, and humour to be distasteful, that’s your right to feel like that. But try to dig a little deeper and ask yourself whether there are potential situations in your life that could confront you with fear or pain that you could be better prepared for if you trained with a different mindset.
When the situation arises that demands life-saving action and you are tired, hungry, scared, and discouraged by opposing advice or opinion, do you have the self-knowledge and resilience to see it through? If you don’t know the answer to that, isn’t it time you found out?
You can find out more about Lee at Urban Combatives

Hexagonal storm on Saturn's North Pole

Our solar system is amazing and beautiful and the wondrous discoveries continue. Watch this video from the NY Times on Saturn’s northern storm, shaped like a hexagon and larger than Earth:

This line from the video is inspiring:
Rings of ice, in a dancing ribbon of Aurora, sitting smack on top of a six-sided hurricaine. Another jewel in the crown of the solar system’s most photogenic planet.

 

Not Your Average Conference

DevEM2014
An amazing conference program, amazing speakers, in an amazing part of the world:

Imagine a line-up that includes FOAM Master Joe Lex and Matt & Mike from the Ultrasound Podcast, and it isn’t even a SMACC event!
I wish I was going, but I already committed to speaking at a great conference elsewhere!
Listen to organisers Mark and Lee talk about this and last year’s fantastic DevelopingEM conference in Cuba:

Here Mark and Lee explain how it works and what to expect:


After the success of our last two conferences in Sydney and Havana we’re taking the DevelopingEM concept to Brazil where Emergency Medicine is quickly evolving as a new specialty.
Our core focus remains the provision of high quality clinically relevant critical care information and with an expanded program and the addition of Sambafest, a 2 day Ultrasound Workshop, run by the team at Ultrasound Podcast, we think this will be our best conference to date.
With an expanded program covering Adult Emergency Medicine and Critical Care, Paediatrics, Trauma, Global Health, Emergency Medicine in Brazil, a LLSA session covering a review of EM and Critical Care Literature and a unique Communication and De-escalation workshop we’re sure there’s something for everyone in our program.
Our 42 hours of education is accredited by ACEM and ACRRM and DevelopingEM is endorsed by IFEM and supported by ASEM so time will be a valuable addition to your yearly continuing professional development.
We’re also repeating the highly successful local delegate sponsorship system that allowed 65 Cubans clinicians to attend DevelopingEM 2013 free of charge. With our connections in the Brazilian Association of Emergency Medicine (ABRAMEDE), presentations on Emergency Medicine in Brazil by some of the leading EM practititioners in Brazil and continuous real time translation of presentations we hope to once again have a distinct local flavour to DevelopingEM 2014.
We have maintained our not for profit financially unsponsored model so you know your education will be untainted ’cause we know you like it that way.

 

Check out the program and register here

These guys are my prehospital & retrieval medicine colleagues and run the DevelopingEM project in a not-for-profit capacity. I have no financial interest in this or any other conference.