The history of the Irish Emergency Medicine Trainees Association (IEMTA)
Foundation
Before 2001, trainees emigrated to the UK and Australia to get formal training in Emergency Medicine. Formal higher specialty training in Emergency Medicine commenced in Ireland in 2001. Two trainees, Ronan O’Sullivan and Cathal O’Donnell, were accepted onto the training programme in 2001. At the time there were two centres for Emergency Medicine training, St James’s Hospital and Cork University Hospital.
Cathal and Ronan founded the Irish Emergency Medicine Training Association in 2001. Initially the committee was composed solely of Cathal (as president) and Ronan (as secretary). The first meetings held by IEMTA were scientific and held in the Mercer hotel beside RCSI.
When IAEM acquired charitable status, IEMTA elected to join formally with IAEM in 2012. Currently members pay membership fees to IAEM.
Website
The IEMTA website was set up by Stuart Carr. This was subsequently maintained by Jason Horan and Rosa McNamara. John Cronin, Jason and Andy Neil were instrumental in developing the background to the new website. At the 2013 IEMTA AGM, there was website officer proposed as a new position on the IEMTA committee. The new IEMTA website was launched at the IEMTA 2014 Spring meeting by the IEMTA website officer Andrew Patton.
Cian McDermott set up the IEMTA facebook site and currently it has 43 members.
Andy Neill, Specialist in Emergency Medicine, moderates his own successful emergency medicine blogging website. EmergencyMedicineIreland.com
Several IEMTA members are keen FOAMers or advocates of Free Open Access Medicine.
Emergency Medicine Student Society of Ireland
The Emergency Medicine Student Society of Ireland was founded in 2012 by Jimmy Lee and Helena Dolphin. There are currently branches of EMSSI in most medical schools in Ireland.
The Future
The future is bright for IEMTA as many bright and enthusiastic doctors join the speciality.
Past Meetings
- IEMTA Summer Scientific Meeting, RCSI, Friday May 13th 2011. “Hot topics debate”. The scientific meeting similarly covered a breath of topis with the platform prize awarded to Dr Dinuk Wijewardene with this take on how to get SMART with your note keeping.
- IEMTA Winter 2011 Meeting, St Vincent’s University Hospital, Friday 28th January, Emergency Medicine Careers Information Evening. The presenters were Mr John Ryan, Dr Rob Egar and Prof Ronan O’Sullivan.
- IEMTA AGM at the Annual Scientific Meeting IAEM, Strand Hotel Limerick, October 20th-22nd 2011.
- IEMTA AGM, IAEM 2010 Meeting, Thursday October 14th-Saturday October 16th 2010, Faithlegg Hotel, Waterford in 2010.
- IEMTA Spring 2010 Meeting, Friday 26th March.
