A report from Lybia of a young Italian emergency physician. What I learned and what I was forgetting

Abstract

Dear Editor, Every emergency medicine resident enjoys facing new clinical cases, learning new invasive procedures, and acting like a detective when it comes to mysterious illnesses. Simulations are essential to train non-technical skills during university education, even though someone could believe that they are a waste of time.1,2 Although all these technical skills are essential to our training, our work goes beyond that. Sometimes we believe that we are superheroes, as we were called during the COVID-19 pandemic. The truth is that we learn every day from the patients and their stories because we treat sick people and not their diseases.3,4 The ability to communicate correctly with patients, relatives, and caregivers is mandatory for all emergency physicians, both resident and senior, and needs to be taught and learned.5,6 If we add the cultural background and the chance to work outside Western countries, then we can learn to work for the patient and not on the patient. [...]

Keywords

• Disaster medicine
• emergency medicine
• emergency resident
• Lybia