Neuroscience & Trauma Symposium

One of the biggest events I was able to help with during my summer internship was Mercy Health - St. Rita’s inaugural Neuroscience & Trauma Symposium; a dynamic 2-day conference that brought experts from across the region and country to Lima to talk about these fields. The conference focused on the latest advances in the treatment and management of different types of trauma. The symposium was designed to foster discussion among clinicians involved in neurosciences and trauma care including physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, physical, speech, occupational therapists, social work, case managers, emergency medical personnel and other health care professionals.

Keynote speakers included – Kevin Menes, MD who was involved in the care of the Las Vegas mass casualty shooting last year. Considered the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history, the tragedy left 58 people dead and 546 injured. That night, Dr. Kevin Menes was the ER doctor in charge at the Sunrise Hospital. “For years I had been planning how I would handle a mass casualty incident, but I rarely shared it because people might think I was crazy,” he said in his account of the incident published in Emergency Physicians Monthly. He said he and his colleagues utilized a strategy that would give everyone a chance to live. That meant normal hospital protocols such as “tagging” patients per the severity of injury had to be modified.

Another keynote speaker was Ian Burkhart, who is a paralyzed trauma patient/survivor sharing his journey. Ian Burkhart was 19 and fearless and horsing around in the surf with friends on vacation in North Carolina’s Outer Banks when he mistimed a dive and a wave drove him headfirst into a sandbar. “I knew instantly when I hit,” Ian said. “You’re face down in the water and you’re trying to get up and suddenly you realize that you can’t move.” Ian Burkhart became the first patient to move his paralyzed hand using groundbreaking technology called Neurobridge. For Ian, the experience has been as fascinating as it is exhausting. “The guys I’m working with, between the doctors at OSU and the researchers at Battelle—they’re ridiculously smart,” he says. “I have learned a lot just going into those sessions and kind of being a fly on the wall. It’s pretty amazing that I can give them feedback and be a part of it.”

Mercy Health also addressed many other “hot” topics in neurosciences and trauma from speakers around the nation.