Training center seeks to improve ER treatment

Since he arrived in China last July, French doctor Jerome Mourad has been struck by the differences in the emergency rooms of the two countries.

Mourad, 29, had worked as an emergency doctor at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Avicenne, located in a suburb in northeast Paris.

"There are always many people in the emergency rooms here in China - always," he said. "While in France, this seldom happens. Doctors will give necessary treatment to patients at the primary section, then directly dispatch the patients to different specialty areas."

Mourad was assigned to Beijing as the medical coordinator of the Sino-French Emergency and Disaster Medicine Training Center, jointly established by the French Embassy in Beijing, the Beijing Health and Family Planning Commission, Beijing Anzhen Hospital and Total, a French petroleum company.

In the past two years, the program has organized training for more than 6,000 practitioners from both countries, including doctors in the emergency rooms as well as a small proportion of medical students.

It was also during the training program that the two countries started to see differences between countries in emergency treatment, from systemic differences to operational details.

"In France, first-aid personnel do not differ from doctors and nurses in the emergency room. When a patient reports an emergency, a team comprising a doctor, a nurse and sometimes an intern will arrive as soon as possible with a very well-equipped ambulance. The team will conduct the first-step treatment that the patient requires right at the scene," Mourad said. "This is so far reckoned as the most effective system for patients. But it costs a lot."

Differences in emergency treatment have been one of the most heated topics of discussion during the training in the past two years.

Nie Shaoping, director of the Emergency and Critical Care Center of Beijing Anzhen Hospital, where the center held the training, explained why emergency treatment in China is still not very well established and has a lot to learn from other countries.

"The emergency treatment system in China is different from the West because in China, we rely on the first-aid personnel to conduct the first-step treatment to the patients before taking them to the hospital," Nie said. "However, most of the first-aid personnel are not professional enough. They only perform basic treatment on the patients."

He also said that some patients who do not require emergency treatment are also taken to the hospitals' emergency rooms.

"Adequate information is also a problem," Nie said. "For example, in Beijing, emergency services such as 120 still do not know which hospitals have beds available and which do not. There are quite a lot of things for us to improve upon. This is also why we are having the training. It is a long process."

He said it can be difficult nowadays for emergency rooms to attract talent.

"The emergency room is known as the most exhausting and even dangerous department in the hospital, because this is the place where conflict between patients and doctors is most easily triggered," Nie said.

The center recently opened a training facility where trainees can practice their emergency skills, such as intubation to open airways, with new equipment. Nie said such training aims to help improve efficiency in the emergency room and helps reduce potential conflicts between patients and doctors.

zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn