At the National Congress on Emergency Medicine, Disasters and Catastrophes of Civil and Military Nature in Plovdiv, the University Hospital in Burgas (UMBAL Burgas) held a two-hour workshop and presented a scientific paper, the hospital said.
The workshop covered how to talk to the relatives of a critically ill patient and how to respond to aggression.
Called "Communication Under Pressure in Emergency Care", it was led by Dr Yuliya Shapovalova and Stoyanka Nikolova. Shapovalova heads public relations at UMBAL Burgas and teaches public communications at Prof. Dr Asen Zlatarov University in Burgas. Nikolova runs the hospital's translation and assistance department, teaches medical terminology at the same university and has written practical guides on communicating with patients who do not speak Bulgarian.
Participants worked on a crisis case in which an emergency medical team faces a serious incident involving a foreign national. Besides making medical decisions, the team has to deal with a language barrier, anxious relatives, difficult talks with institutions and media interest.
The training's message was that good communication does not mean a medic must meet every request. It means giving clear information, managing expectations and protecting both the patient's interest and the medic's own professional position.
Shapovalova also presented the paper "Communication Roles in Emergency Medicine as a Tool for Quality and Trust". The model it proposes concerns communication training in medical education. Shapovalova said communication is more than a skill for treating patients kindly: it is a tool for coordinating actions, reducing tension, managing uncertainty and building trust.
The congress ran for four days, from 7 to 10 October. The programme had 65 scientific abstracts, 6 practical workshops and 2 specialised pre-courses, with scientific sessions held in three parallel halls. There was also one large demonstration of how to act in a disaster.
On 7 October we reported that neurosurgeon Dr Svetoslav Todorov of UMBAL Burgas presented an electronic poster at a congress of the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies, with an analysis of neurosurgical care in Bulgaria and how it is spread across regions.
The sessions covered treatment of critically ill patients, modern resuscitation techniques, how emergency care is organised, legal issues in medical work and new technologies. Specialists from different fields of emergency medicine took part: doctors from hospitals and emergency medical centres, paramedics, rescuers, military medics, teachers and experts from Bulgaria and abroad.