Rick Body

Latest EMJ podcast now out, covering 🥁🥁🥁

🩸 Blood products in paediatric trauma

⌚ Predicting ED waiting times 👀

🔍 Same Day Emergency Care

📲 Digital streaming tools

📖 Plus, 'Whose turn is it?' A SUBLIME poem ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

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October’s quote of the month is from a Langston Hughes poem.

“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly”.

Thanks very much indeed, Michael!

Thanks!

Great suggestion! 🏅
We do want to diversify our team. I’m all ears!

Whiteboard with a quote saying “Thinking is difficult. That’s why most people judge”.

It’s September, so it’s time for another office quote of the month! This time, it’s from Carl Jung

I’m honoured to be starting as Editor in Chief at the Emergency Medicine Journal from January 2026.

😬🤩 I’m both daunted and excited, I’m so grateful to Ellen Weber and all the fantastic people I’ve been working with on this journey & I’m looking forward to building a bright future for the EMJ! 📈🚀

Dr. Jesse Pines stands in an emergency department room.

We are excited to launch our new talk series: Care, Outcomes, and Reform of Emergency Systems (CORE) Talks. Free Zoom seminars on policy-relevant evidence about EDs, telemedicine, and urgent care.

www.coretalks.org

Today at 11a EST, Dr. Jesse Pines, “How AI May Transform Emergency Care.”

Ha! At my next appraisal, my professional development plan should include a ninja course, I think.

Either that or a helmet.

Failing that, send me a consent form!

Thanks a lot, John! Much appreciated. At least it’s mainly a multi-colored eye this time. Concussion was definitely worse!

Thanks a lot, Aidan - I really appreciate your kind words. None of us should have to put up with this at work.

Thanks a lot, Stewart

Three weeks ago, a patient kicked me so hard in the temple. It took at least 10 days to recover from the concussion.

Tonight, it happened *again* - kicked in the eye & across the room by another patient as I calmly tried to talk him down.

I’m not the only one. And it’s completely unacceptable.

Too many of my peers & those decades older are not cognisant of the facts around the problems for Resident Doctors

Who are paid 20-30% less, have £100k student debt, will have substantially lower pensions

Yet here they are speaking to the media from their positions of privilege

Check the facts🤷🏻‍♂️

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question). an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question: "there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask. it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same. it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.” there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face."

applying for jobs again

Always .
Last shift I sat down with an upset colleague and counselled them .
The previous shift I broke very bad news to a patient and family .
Later on in that shift an aggressive man triggered my latent PTSD and the team looked after me .
We must take time to be compassionate .

Agreed 💯% - right answer!

A quote on a whiteboard, which says, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes”.

June’s quote of the month for my office board.
This one is courtesy of Carl Jung!

Is there still room for compassion in emergency care? This blog post explores the important issue of compassion in emergency care. With all the pressures we currently face, it can be extremely hard to remain compassionate. I explore common barriers to co...

Is there still room for compassion in emergency care?
I answered this question in a @stemlyns.bsky.social blog, over a decade after I first led research on this topic, which should always be at the heart of emergency care…

www.stemlynsblog.org/is-there-sti...

Is there still room for compassion in emergency care? This blog post explores the important issue of compassion in emergency care. With all the pressures we currently face, it can be extremely hard to remain compassionate. I explore common barriers to co...

Is there still room for compassion in emergency care? At @stemlyns.bsky.social.

Over a decade after I first talked about this topic, I revisited it with some of the many things I’ve learned more recently about compassion in our daily practice.

www.stemlynsblog.org/is-there-sti...

Rather than focusing on this, surely the FA should focus on *much* more important equality issues for women’s football, e.g., inequities in:
- Pay
- Media coverage
- Playing surfaces, with - e.g. high rates of ACL injury
- Access to top stadia
- Stereotyping, culture, even assault

The FA has banned trans women from playing women’s football.
What problem does it solve? How were the 0.0002% of players who are trans (none of them professional) causing harm?

Sport should be inclusive, it’s so important for health. Excluding whole groups without justification is totally wrong.

A photo of Pope Francis with the quote: “We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: We will meet one another there.”

One of my favourite quotes from Pope Francis, who said he would be a “Pope of the poor”.
He spoke out against injustice, emphasizing the need for compassion, calling for peace & strongly supporting the Palestinian people under attack. Rest in peace.

It’s right that our society should be worried about women’s safety. Violence against women & girls is rife, and we all have a responsibility to tackle it.
But the answer is not to blame trans people.
Effectively banning legal gender transition will not help.
Trans rights are human rights 🏳️‍⚧️

This is a great point. I think we need to be better at “planning for crisis” across the NHS, especially with an ageing & increasingly comorbid population.
‘In the event of crisis attend a crowded ED’, across the board, is usually poor care.

The biggest problem with democracy is that people vote in ignorance.
All of this was openly available before the US election. At CPAC, Liz Truss spoke about how checks & balances got in her way.
People still voted for it, largely because of hate, driven by fear, which was also driven by ignorance.

As with many things, it depends how it’s done. If it’s delivered by a detached leadership without adequate stakeholder consultation, disaster.

If it’s done properly, in partnership, patients will benefit.

ATM patients with acute mental illness really aren’t cared for in an optimal environment.

This makes me extremely proud to work at MFT.

We have the *only* printed collection of the human genome in the UK with each chromosome *organised by colour*.

Outstanding.

Quote of the month.
This is from Charlie Chaplin’s famous ‘The Great Dictator’ speech, and I think it’s pertinent right now.

Today is Transgender Day of Visibility.
Trans people face huge challenges from >5 year NHS waiting lists for care to homelessness (1 in 5) to >40% of employers unsure if they’d employ a trans person, verbal abuse (85%), assault (29%/3 years) & much more.
It’s more important than ever to mark today 🏳️‍⚧️