Geriatric Emergency Medicine

Dr. Don Melady continues his work with SREMI focussed on promoting excellent care of older ED patients in Mount Sinai’s own ED and on disseminating and implementing the concept of the older person-friendly ED, nationally and internationally. His work was recognized this year by the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto when he was promoted to full Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.

The Geriatric Emergency Medicine fellowship hosted its final fellow this year. Dr. Priyank Bhatnagar successfully completed the year with several publications with CJEM and more under review. He also joined the teaching core faculty for the national CAEP Geriatric EM Course. He developed expertise in delirium and in teaching skills with a number of provincial and national presentations.

SREMI now has eleven alumni of this fellowship program working in leadership positions in seven Canadian provinces and in Singapore. With no applicants for next year’s fellowship and Dr. Melady reducing his teaching load, the fellowship will shift leadership to the new Daniels Seniors Emergency Centre at UHN under the leadership of Dr. Alice Gray, a graduate of the fellowship.

Dr. Melady is active on the international stage. He completed his three-year term as the chair of the Clinical Practice Committee at the International Federation of Emergency Medicine and is now leading it organizational re-structuring process. He was actively involved in planning the ICEM 2024 conference in Taiwan and is on the Oversight Committee for ICEM 2025 in Montreal. At the American grant-funded organization, The Geriatric ED Collaborative, he creates and hosts a widely attended bi-monthly webinar series on various topics in geriatric ED care. He creates content and support for the group’s website https:// gedcollaborative.com. He works with a team to disseminate and implement best practices in geriatric ED care in hospitals and health systems across the United States. He is on the Editorial Board of the new Journal of Geriatric Emergency Medicine which has developed a strategic plan that includes PubMed indexing over the next two years

In June 2024, Mount Sinai Hospital announced the Dr. Don Melady Chair in Geriatric Emergency Medicine, one of 18 fully endowed academic chairs. This chair will allow SREMI to support an academic to continue work – research, education, system change, advocacy -- in improving care of older ED patients.

Dr. Melady maintains a leadership role in the Geriatric EM committee of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP). The Education group within that committee has developed and presented a Clinical Geriatric EM course seven times for Canadian emergency physicians. This year, the course was hosted by physician groups in Newfoundland and a live course at North York General Hospital. The group presented CAEP National Grand Rounds in November 2024 focussing on the impact of frailty in older ED patients. Dr. Melady continued leading the EM Learning Exposition at both CAEP and ICEM conferences, where over 450 conference participants interacted with clinical experts in “learning stalls” across the spectrum of emergency medicine.