Emergency medicine

Designed for general practitioners seeking to refresh and advance their emergency and critical care expertise, this comprehensive online course delivers practical, evidence-based training in the rapid assessment and management of critically ill companion animals. You’ll improve patient outcomes by strengthening your skills in key areas, including triage, point-of-care diagnostics, transfusion medicine, and life-saving interventions such as CPR and shock resuscitation.

Covering a broad range of emergency presentations, this course will equip you with current, clinical knowledge to stabilise and treat patients with confidence. You’ll enhance your decision-making under pressure, be able to communicate complex concepts clearly to pet owners and earn their trust, and be better prepared to manage urgent cases in the fast-paced environment of emergency veterinary medicine. 

Why do an emergency medicine course?

  • Update clinical knowledge
  • Strengthen triage capabilities
  • Improve patient stabilisation
  • Enhance emergency decision-making
  • Improve diagnostic accuracy
  • Sharpen practical skills
  • Reduce treatment delays
  • Increase critical patient survival

Topics

Participants should expect to spend 12-15 hours to complete this course.

  • After-hours clinical pathology
  • Anaemia and bleeding
  • Heat-related illness and heat stroke
  • Toxicology: tremorgenic and neurologic toxins
  • Trauma
  • Cardiopulmonary

Learning objectives

  • Understand triage assessments for emergency patients, including the identification of stable versus unstable conditions.
  • Interpret key emergency point-of-care laboratory tests used during stabilisation.
  • Recognise the triggers for initiating CPR and the essential elements of both basic and advanced life support.
  • Identify types of shock and their consequences, as well as the indications and types of IV fluids required for effective resuscitation.
  • Assess and manage respiratory distress, including the essential components for stabilisation and common diagnostic tools.
  • Recognise common tremorgenic and neurologic toxins, and learn the principles of decontamination and stabilisation in cases of intoxication.
  • Understand trauma patient evaluation, imaging modalities, and management strategies, as well as appropriate blood product use and transfusion protocols.
  • Identify the contributing factors to heat stress and heat stroke, understand how to distinguish between these two conditions, and learn how to treat them.

Contributors

  • Ivayla D Yozova MVM Dr.med.vet. MBA FHEA Dipl.ACVECC Dipl.ECVECC ISFM CertAdvFB
  • Avalene Tan BVSc DACVECC