The REEME Project: A model for international
distance emergency medicine education
Many superb clinicians throughout Latin America are currently struggling to implement emergency medicine training, often with relatively few educational resources and with little interaction among these countries' emergency medicine academics, each of whom is trying to "reinvent the wheel."
While many emergency physicians from outside the region have traveled to these countries to give talks or to help them develop curriculums, these efforts have been in the spirit of "fishing for them," rather than of "helping them to fish." The Recursos Educacionales en Español para Medicina de Emergencia (REEME) Project takes the next step: using a novel distance-learning approach to provide excellent, freely available, Spanish-language teaching tools in each emergency medicine content area.
Progress of the REEME website
Initiated in November 2004, the REEME educational website is managed by a single academic emergency physician with the computer system maintained by the Learning Technology Center at the University of Arizona. As of February 1, 2007, 352 academic donors from 17 countries had provided 463 Spanish-language emergency medicine educational presentations for educators to download and use.
Most programs are PowerPoint presentations, but some books are also on the site, such as Manejo de las Arritmias from the Argentinean Intensive Care and Guía de Manejo y Tratamiento de los Síndromes Coronarios Agudos from the Argentinean Federation of Cardiology’s Committee on Cardiac Ischemia.
Colleagues in 58 countries have downloaded REEME programs, with more than 530 downloads each month.
Using the REEME website
The REEME website (www.reeme.arizona.edu) links educational materials to each topic in the Model Curriculum for Emergency Medicine, the standard used to train and test U.S. emergency physicians. They also are listed by name, along with their authors and country of origin. To use the materials, go to the web site and click on “Lista de Programas” to get a simple list of programs. Any can be downloaded or opened from that location.
Most users go to the “Indice de Materias” and open one of the major EM categories, such as “Cardiologia,” “Pediatria,” or “Trauma.” A list of EM learning objectives appears along with the number of programs on the REEME site for those topics.
Clicking the adjacent arrow opens that list of programs along with its format (Acrobat, Word, PowerPoint, or video,), the author, and the country of origin. Clicking on any of these allows it to be opened or downloaded.
Any program can either be opened and viewed on-line or downloaded. However, if not using a broadband system, downloading and using the programs from an individual computer is the fastest and easiest way to use the programs.
Contributing to the REEME website
Program contributions to REEME are welcomed. The programs should be theme-based (rather than a case description) programs dealing with one or more of the Objectivos listed in the Curriculo Modelo, also available from any page on the REEME site.
To contribute material to REEME, either email Dr. Iserson (kvi@u.arizona.edu) with the program attached, or go to the www.reeme.arizona.edu site and follow the instructions for donating.
PowerPoint files are preferred, except for books or manuals for which copyright permission has been obtained.
The REEME educational library is an ongoing project, with materials updated or replaced as needed.
REEME’s Benefits to International EM
The REEME Project is assisting the development of emergency medicine education at the physician, nurse, prehospital and student levels throughout Latin America.
It provides a focal point for rapid development of training programs for Spanish-speaking specialist and non-specialist healthcare personnel working in emergency departments and pre-hospital care. It also provides a focal point for educational interchange between and cooperation among Latin America's developing emergency medicine academicians.
Most important, it serves as a cost-effective model for similar distance-education projects throughout the world and in other medical specialties.
Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D., MBA
Professor of Emergency Medicine
1501 N. Campbell Avenue; POB 245057
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85724
kvi@u.arizona.edu
