Establishing Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Israel: Reflections and Lessons

This work describes the challenges encountered by the author in establishing and developing emergency medicine and pediatric emergency medicine as medical specialties in Israel. Many of the measures were largely based on his training in the United States, including a clinical fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. The article covers the clinical precepts on which emergency care is based, their practical applications, administrative obstacles, and new protocols and guidelines. A major milestone was the introduction of guidelines from the Pediatric Advanced Life Support course and other educational activities, followed by the establishment of an infrastructure to encourage local, national, and international educational and collaborative research projects and quality control.