Mastering Intensive Care 045 with Scott Weingart

Today’s guest is Scott Weingart, the pioneer podcaster in the intensive care field through his EMCrit podcast.

Scott is an ED Intensivist from New York, where he is Chief of the Division of Emergency Critical Care at Stony Brook Hospital and a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stony Brook Medicine. Scott has devoted his career to bringing “Upstairs Care, Downstairs” (ie. bringing ICU care down to the ED – where it needs to be). He loves his job taking care of the sickest patients, innovating new ways to do it better, and then teaching these concepts to his residents. Of course, none of that is nearly as much fun as playing with his son, Mace.

Scott is best known for talking to himself about Resuscitation and Critical Care on the EMCrit podcast, which has been downloaded over 20 million times. EMCrit is also a hugely valuable blog and educational resource.

In this conversation Scott talks about:

• How he trained to be where he is now as an ED intensivist
• What inspired his mission to improve critical care prior to ICU admission
• How he got into podcasting
• The benefit of putting his views out into the online community
• How podcasting and new media can allow the “small to be seen”
• The automatic peer review built in to his podcasting
• The value he’s had from SMACC conferences and the FOAM movement
• His obsession to improve
• What a day in his life is like
• How his martial arts experience spurned his meditation practice
• What his minimal effective dose of meditation is
• His thoughts and use of negative visualisation and mental rehearsal
• The value of errors in improving ourselves
• The need to be care- rather than people-orientated in resuscitation
• How his communication is changing over time
• The use of dramatic pauses to spur knowledge translation and learning
• His advice on reading
• And some of his favourite books and podcasts

Scott is a deep-thinking man, very focused on understanding and practicing well considered and patient-oriented care particularly at the resuscitation end of intensive or critical care medicine, and is very good with spoken language.

Please enjoy listening to Scott Weingart.

People, organisations and resources mentioned in the episode:

• Scott Weingart on Twitter: @emcrit
• EMCrit podcast & website
• Talks: “The Path to Insanity” and “Kettlebells for the Brain”
• People: Liz Crowe
• People: Cliff Reid
• People: Chris Hicks
• People: Sara Gray
• People: Seth Godin
• Website: SMACC
• Website: Crazy Socks 4 Docs
• MIC podcast 013 with Sara Gray
• MIC podcast 021 with Martin Bromiley
• Essay: The Thousand True Fans (by Kevin Kelly)
• Book: “House of God” (by Samuel Shem)
• Book: “A Confederacy of Dunces” (by John Kennedy Toole)
• Book: “Catch 22” (by Joseph Heller)
• Podcast: 99% Invisible
• Podcast: Radiolab
• Podcast: The Flop House
  

Further reading and listening

• Full podcast collection on LITFL and Libsyn
• The New Normal Project podcast
• More conversation on Twitter (@andrewdavies66) and Facebook