Design and rationale of an interactive serious game to teach Basic Life Support among schoolchildren in Brazil.

UNSTRUCTURED: Cardiovascular diseases are leading causes of death and morbidity worldwide. CPR and early defibrillation significantly enhance survival rates. Serious Games (SG) improve learning through entertainment. Current strategies target Cardiopulmonary resuscitation for communities and schoolchildren, but none have been validated for children in low-to-middle-income settings. The SG Children Save Hearts, developed in Brazil, teaches the five resuscitation steps according to International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation 2020 guidelines and requires formal usability assessment. The study aimed to evaluate the usability of SG Children Save Hearts among IT and healthcare professionals using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The usability test was conducted in August 2022 in the university's IT department. The game was developed targeting schoolchildren aged 7 to 17. Categorical variables as absolute and relative frequencies, while continuous variables were presented as median with interquartile range (IQR). Normality was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test. Comparisons between IT and healthcare professionals were made using the independent t-test for normal distributions or the Mann-Whitney U test for non-normal distributions. We included 17 volunteers with a mean age of 22 years (IQR 20-26). All participants played the game and completed a 10-question survey on its usability using a Likert-type scale. The final grade was converted to a 0 to 100 scale, with a grade above 70 considered acceptable for a minimum viable product. The mean SUS score was 75 (IQR 72.5-87.5). Healthcare professionals gave higher grades to all five domains compared to IT professionals. The average time spent playing the game was 3.2 minutes. Novel technologies have shown promising results for CPR teaching using active teaching methods, but face challenges in developing countries, such as language barriers, device acquisition, cultural differences, and technical support. To our knowledge, this is the first SG developed in portuguese for brazilian schoolchidren. Despite some usability issues, the SG Children Save Hearts is considered adequate for teaching CPR to schoolchildren in Brazil.

Emergency medicine in Brazil: historical perspective, current status, and future challenges.

BACKGROUND: Emergency medicine (EM) in Brazil has achieved critical steps toward its development in the last decades including its official recognition as a specialty in 2016. In this article, we worked in collaboration with the Brazilian Association of Emergency Medicine (ABRAMEDE) to describe three main aspects of EM in Brazil: (1) brief historical perspective; (2) current status; and (3) future challenges. MAIN TEXT: In Brazil, the first EM residency program was created in 1996. Only 20 years later, the specialty was officially recognized by national regulatory bodies. Prior to recognition, there were only 2 residency programs. Since then, 52 new programs were initiated. Brazil has now 54 residency programs in 16 of the 27 federative units. As of December 2020, 192 physicians have been board certified as emergency physicians in Brazil. The shortage of formal EM-trained physicians is still significant and at this point it is not feasible to have all Brazilian emergency care units and EDs staffed only with formally trained emergency physicians. Three future challenges were identified including the recognition of EM specialists in the house of Medicine, the need of creating a reliable training curriculum despite highly heterogeneous emergency care practice across the country, and the importance of fostering the development of academic EM as a way to build a strong research agenda and therefore increase the knowledge about the epidemiology and organization of emergency care. CONCLUSION: Although EM in Brazil has accomplished key steps toward its development, there are several obstacles before it becomes a solid medical specialty. Its continuous development will depend on special attention to key challenges involving recognition, reliability, and research.

Puntos clave sobre la COVID-19 en los servicios de urgencias: propuestas de mejora para su atención en Latinoamérica / Key issues in emergency department management of COVID-19: proposals for improving care for patients in Latin America

La incidencia y el impacto de la COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) en Latinoamérica y España, en particular en sus servicios de urgencias hospitalarios (SUH), independientemente de la diversidad de los conceptos y definiciones de casos confirmados o sospechosos empleados ha sido, es, y, desgraciadamente a medio plazo, va a seguir siendo enorme, sostenida e imprevisible. En este escenario global, un grupo multinacional de expertos y representantes del Grupo de Trabajo Latinoamericano para la mejora de la atención del paciente con Infección en Urgencias (GT-LATINFURG), compuesto por 13 Sociedades y Asociaciones Científicas que integran la Federación Latinoamericana de Medicina de Emergencias (FLAME), junto con la Sociedad Española de Medicina de Urgencias y Emergencias (SEMES),ha elaborado diversos documentos técnicos y de opinión destinados a los profesionales de los Sistemas de Urgencias y Emergencias de nuestros países. El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer unas pautas o recomendaciones consensuadas para facilitar la actuación de los SUH en relación los puntos que los miembros del grupo han considerado más interesantes o clave en relación a: la necesidad de reorganizar los SUH, triaje, disponibilidad de pruebas complementarias habituales y otras como biomarcadores, la identificación del paciente con COVID-19 a través de criterios clínicos, analíticos, radiológicos y microbiológicos, así como factores de riesgo, pronóstico y de mortalidad que puedan ayudara detectar rápidamente a los pacientes graves a su llegada a los dispositivos de Urgencias y Emergencias de los hospitales en nuestro entorno

The incidence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Latin America and Spain and its impact particularly on hospital emergency departments have been great, sustained, and unpredictable. Unfortunately, this situation will continue in the medium term, regardless of the diverse concepts and definitions used to identify cases or hypotheses about the role of staff. In the context of the worldwide pandemic, a multinational group of experts from the Latin American Working Group to Improve Care for Patients With Infection (GT-LATINFURG) has drafted various opinion papers for use by emergency care systems in the member countries. The GT-LATINFURG is comprised of representatives from the 13 scientific associations affiliated with the Latin American Federation for Emergency Medicine (FLAME). Experts from the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES) also participated. The present consensus statement offers protocols and recommendations to facilitate the work of hospital emergency departments with regard to key issues the group identified, namely, the need for reorganization, triage, and routine test availability. Additional issues discussed include biomarkers; clinical, laboratory, radiologic, and microbiologic criteria for identifying patients with COVID-19; and risk and prognostic factors for mortality that emergency staff can use to quickly detect severe cases in our settings

Key issues in emergency department management of COVID-19: proposals for improving care for patients in Latin America. / Puntos clave sobre la COVID-19 en los servicios de urgencias: propuestas de mejora para su atención en Latinoamérica.

The incidence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Latin America and Spain and its impact particularly on hospital emergency departments have been great, sustained, and unpredictable. Unfortunately, this situation will continue in the medium term, regardless of the diverse concepts and definitions used to identify cases or hypotheses about the role of staff. In the context of the worldwide pandemic, a multinational group of experts from the Latin American Working Group to Improve Care for Patients With Infection (GT-LATINFURG) has drafted various opinion papers for use by emergency care systems in the member countries. The GT-LATINFURG is comprised of representatives from the 13 scientific associations affiliated with the Latin American Federation for Emergency Medicine (FLAME). Experts from the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES) also participated. The present consensus statement offers protocols and recommendations to facilitate the work of hospital emergency departments with regard to key issues the group identified, namely, the need for reorganization, triage, and routine test availability. Additional issues discussed include biomarkers; clinical, laboratory, radiologic, and microbiologic criteria for identifying patients with COVID-19; and risk and prognostic factors for mortality that emergency staff can use to quickly detect severe cases in our settings.

La incidencia y el impacto de la COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) en Latinoamérica y España, en particular en sus servicios de urgencias hospitalarios (SUH), independientemente de la diversidad de los conceptos y definiciones de casos confirmados o sospechosos empleados ha sido, es, y, desgraciadamente a medio plazo, va a seguir siendo enorme, sostenida e imprevisible. En este escenario global, un grupo multinacional de expertos y representantes del Grupo de Trabajo Latinoamericano para la mejora de la atención del paciente con Infección en Urgencias (GTLATINFURG), compuesto por 13 Sociedades y Asociaciones Científicas que integran la Federación Latinoamericana de Medicina de Emergencias (FLAME), junto con la Sociedad Española de Medicina de Urgencias y Emergencias (SEMES), ha elaborado diversos documentos técnicos y de opinión destinados a los profesionales de los Sistemas de Urgencias y Emergencias de nuestros países. El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer unas pautas o recomendaciones consensuadas para facilitar la actuación de los SUH en relación los puntos que los miembros del grupo han considerado más interesantes o clave en relación a: la necesidad de reorganizar los SUH, triaje, disponibilidad de pruebas complementarias habituales y otras como biomarcadores, la identificación del paciente con COVID-19 a través de criterios clínicos, analíticos, radiológicos y microbiológicos, así como factores de riesgo, pronóstico y de mortalidad que puedan ayudar a detectar rápidamente a los pacientes graves a su llegada a los dispositivos de Urgencias y Emergencias de los hospitales en nuestro entorno.