IAEM's Role in the Community

There are approximately 1.3 million attendances at Emergency Departments in the Republic of Ireland every year.  Data collection for research purposes can be difficult, because of the unscheduled and heterogenous nature of many of the conditions with which patients present, as well as underdeveloped and often rudimentary IT systems.

As a strategic objective IAEM is anxious to ensure the delivery of the greatest public and community benefit from its members' expertise. Many of our members have special interests that have developed during their practice of Emergency Medicine in Ireland and abroad and have developed links with other emergency services and many statutory and voluntary community groups.  In some cases, their involvement predated, and possibly influenced, their choice of emergency medicine as a career.

Some interests includes attempts to prevent the emergency happening in the first place, by providing data in relation to common types of emergencies,  common locations of accidents and working with the Health and Safety Authority, Road Safety Authority and other relevant groups to re-engineer physical and behavioural factors. Some of this work involves optimising the perfomance of the entire emergency care system, from the prehospital phase to rehabilitation once an emergency has occurred.

Examples of such Community Links include:

• Improvement of Road Safety by working with the Road Safety Authority and others
• Involvement of IAEM members with the St. John Ambulance Service
• The Global Emergency Care Skills organisation
• Involvement of IAEM members with the Irish Heart Foundation
• Involvement of IAEM members with an International Foster Care Conference
• Advice with regard to the Safe handling of fireworks
• Endorsement of the ICE campaign
• Endorsement of Access to CPR & Community Defibrillation
• Involvement of IAEM Members in the Humanitarian response to the Haiti Earthquake