The Formation of the First Student-Led EM Interest Group in Uganda

MUST EM residents running a BLS practical session organized by MUST-EMIG on campus for EM-bound students.

The Formation of the First StudentLed EM Interest Group in Uganda

By Jonathan Kajjimu and Randall Ellis, MD, MPH, MBA

Emergency medicine (EM) is a new specialty in Uganda. Graduation of the first class of EM residents occurred only in 2020. The Ugandan Ministry of Health and many collaborating organizations are working to develop and improve emergency care for all 47 million citizens. Until recently, EM was not an option for students, but that has changed. This is an overview of the first EM interest group (EMIG) in the country.

It was on social media that I found a poster of the inaugural Emergency Care Conference in Uganda to occur August 2019 and decided to attend. My objective was to learn more about reading electrocardiograms (ECGs). I attended the ECG workshop and met an amazing facilitator, Dr. Mary Ellen Lyon, who later became my first formal mentor. Dr. Lyon motivated me to start an emergency medicine interest group (EMIG) as a way of sharing resources with other students who were passionate about EM. I was matched with my mentor, Dr. Lyon, by Dr. Christine Ngaruiya, who spoke at the conference about mentorship with female students in Kenya. Around this time, another EM physician, Dr. Mardi Steere, shared a link to a virtual EM conference organized by Don’t Forget the Bubbles (DFTB). I attended this DFTB event in August 2020 and met Dr. Andrew Tagg, who would become key to the successful foundation of our EMIG. In late September 2020 I connected with a Nigerian colleague on Twitter who had started a national EMIG in her country. She encouraged me to start an EMIG at Mbarara University of Science & Technology (MUST), a public university in Uganda. Finally, through the guidance of Drs. Lyons and Tagg, the help of faculty advisor Dr. Justine Athieno Odakha, and online support and resources from the Emergency Medicine Residents Association (EMRA), our EMIG was finally established. The Mbarara University of Science and Technology Emergency Medicine Interest Group (MUST-EMIG) officially started on December 9, 2020. Our student group was originally founded for medical students, but in a quest to include other members of the emergency care team, we decided to invite interested nursing students to be members as well. Currently medical students make up most of the group membership.

The goals of MUST-EMIG include providing opportunities for students to learn key aspects of the EM knowledge base and participate in resuscitation simulations. The EMIG also facilitates close communication between students and the department of emergency medicine at MUST and introduces the specialty of EM to MUST students and faculty. During a recent survey of over 100 registered group members, most students believed that the EMIG could aid in pursuing a career in EM. Our EMIG is serving as a model to other student organizations at MUST and throughout Uganda.

We have successfully held online lecture webinars and journal clubs, attended EM conferences and courses, organized EM skills simulations, and sent some EMIG students for training and certification in life support courses. I have been invited to engage with other stakeholders and organizations on behalf of MUST EM-bound students. One of our students was recently selected as the first Ugandan to join the fourth cohort of the American College of Emergency Physicians/EMRA Global Emergency Medicine Student Leadership Program. We are grateful for the support we have received from organizations such as DFTB, Emergency Care Courses Uganda, EMRA, Emergency Care Society of Uganda, Seed Global Health, and others.

Some challenges we encountered included lack of stable internet access for all students to attend our online activities, lack of proper presentation and communication tools, and the inability to fund all interested students to attend and achieve certification in life support courses. Of course, university closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic also hampered some of our plans.

We hope that in the future our student group will continue to supplement our medical education until we have a well-established EM curriculum in Uganda. At present we are discussing the development of a toxicology module for EM-bound students at MUST in partnership with Yale University. Also, to contribute to the scientific evidence concerning the benefit of EMIGs, we intend to have standardized objective self-assessments of all students’ pre- and post-group activities. Lastly, we hope our EMIG will someday be open to all interested medical students in the country.

We are pleased to have inspired fellow students to initiate their own interest groups. MUST students are founding interest groups for internal medicine, pathology, and rehabilitation medicine. Our colleagues at Gulu University in northern Uganda are in the final stages of initiating their EMIG. Also, in most of our online sessions, students from 2-3 other universities join us, which proves that medical students in Uganda are eager to learn more about EM.

In conclusion, we encourage medical students to attend conferences of disciplines they are passionate about. Through such conferences, innumerable networking opportunities can arise. We also call upon conference organizers to consider making conference attendance free or sponsored for global medical and nursing students. Our EMIG would not exist without student attendance. It has been by standing on the shoulders of EM giants whom we met in conferences that we have been able to see further. We pay our significant respect to all of champions of Global Emergency Medicine, past and present. EM has a bright future in Uganda because of global collaboration.

The first student leadership team (executive committee) of MUST-EMIG.

MUST EM residents running a BLS practical session organized by MUST-EMIG on campus for EM-bound students.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jonathan Kajjimu is a fourthyear medical student and the founding president of the MUST (Mbarara University of Science and Technology) Emergency Medicine Interest Group, in Mbarara, Uganda.

Dr. Randall Ellis, MD, MPH, MBA, is director of emergency medicine programs and physician educator with Mbarara University of Science and Technology; educator, Seed Global Health.