Medical Congress in Belize Focuses on Emergency Care
This year’s medical congress is being held here in Belize City for two days and is focusing on emergency medicine. “Multidisciplinary Approach to Emergency Medicine” is the theme of the thirty-eighth annual congress. As such, medical professionals and front line providers are being updated on how to provide immediate treatment to patients in life threatening situations. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Over three hundred stakeholders in the local medical field, including doctors and nurses, converged at the Biltmore Plaza for a two-day event that started on Wednesday. The annual medical congress organized by the Belize Medical and Dental Association seeks to bring these professionals up to date with what’s happening in the medical field—from changes in best practices to treatment options. This year, the congress is focused on emergency care.
Uldine Wright
Dr. Uldine Wright, Secretary, Belize Medical & Dental Association
“This is the thirty-eight annual congress; this year focuses on emergency medicine. Our theme is “Multidisciplinary Approach to Emergency Medicine.” We are catering for doctors, nurses, allied health. We cover all specialities: geriatrics, paediatrics, general medicine.”
Emergency care is an important aspect when practicing medicine because what happens in the first thirty minutes of an emergency can literally determine life or death. The Ministry of Health is partnering with the B.M.D.A. as this serves as a continuous education process for health professionals.
Dr. Uldine Wright
“With the Belize Medical and Dental Association, we have different goals and roles in the medical field, but one of our most important is continuing of medical education. We have different sessions throughout the year, but the congress is the major one.”
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
“We have national and international persons who are going to be giving different presentations throughout the course of today and tomorrow. What we try to do is ensure that our staff participate in as much as they can without leaving the public health services unattended. So we try to rotate and ensure that we have active participation because it counts as continuous medical education which is a requirement for an annual license to be given.”
According to Director of Health Services, Doctor Marvin Manzanero, the ministry is in the process of retaining an emergency physician for the national referral hospital. That additional human resource, along with the ongoing training for triage nurses and front line personnel, will allow for the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital to better be able to address critical emergency care.
Marvin Manzanero
Dr. Marvin Manzanero
“We are doing, in partnership with a university our of the U.S., what we call a basic emergency course using the W.H.O. platform. We have trained people across the country and so training is duplicated at each local facility. That has been happening all this year; that’s one. Two, we are trying to get a cohort of doctors at Karl Heusner to be accredited by a university in the U.S. in emergency care and I believe later this year, we are going to have our first emergency physician because that is a specialty of medicine. Eventually I think we want to ensure that all frontline staff has some level of exposure to emergency care because the triage and the initial twenty, thirty minutes in any given situation is what can dictate the eventual outcome.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
