A joint Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine grand rounds series exploring the full arc of critical illness — from initial resuscitation in the ED through ICU recovery and beyond.
Emergency physicians are trained to act fast, stabilize, and move. We make high-stakes decisions on incomplete information in minutes. The ED is where critical illness is first recognized — and where its trajectory is set.
Intensivists inherit those decisions. The vasopressor choice, the intubation strategy, the fluid balance — all shape what the ICU team faces at 2am. Recovery is not simply "surviving the ED." It is a continuum that begins in triage.
From Resus to Recovery brings EM and CCM faculty together to follow a single critically ill patient across the full clinical arc — from initial presentation and resuscitation through ICU management, complications, and recovery. Each session is designed to surface the friction between specialties, not paper over it.
The ED phase — first recognition, initial stabilization, resuscitative decisions under uncertainty.
The transition moment — what is communicated, what is assumed, what is lost between ED and ICU.
The ICU arc — how early decisions ripple forward, what the team inherited, and how recovery was shaped.
Recognize how early resuscitative decisions in the ED directly shape downstream ICU management, complications, and recovery trajectory.
Identify high-yield communication gaps at the EM–CCM interface and develop strategies to close them in real-time handoffs.
Apply an integrated, patient-centered framework to critical illness that bridges specialty silos from initial presentation through discharge.
Understand the EM and ICU perspectives on contested management decisions — and articulate the reasoning behind each approach without defensiveness.
Reflect on systems-level contributors to critical illness outcomes, including handoff structure, bed flow, and interdisciplinary communication norms.
[Placeholder — additional objective tied to specific clinical domain of the series, e.g. sepsis, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, etc.]
PGY-1 through PGY-4. See how your resuscitation decisions look from the other side of the handoff.
Understand the constraints and reasoning that shaped the patient you inherited at 0300.
Longitudinal exposure to outcomes that typically disappear once the patient leaves your department.
A structured forum to give feedback upstream — and hear the ED perspective on shared patients.
Early exposure to the full arc of critical illness across specialties, not just a single department view.
Sessions launch July/August 2026. Topics and dates below are placeholders — update as the program takes shape.
Each session runs approximately [60–90] minutes and follows this structure. Timing is flexible by session.
Anonymous case vignette presented cold — ED presentation, vitals, triage chief complaint. No diagnosis given. Audience sees what the ED team saw on arrival.
EM faculty walks through the resuscitation. Decisions are presented with their real-time reasoning — not in retrospect. Discussion of what was known, unknown, and contested.
The literal transition. What was communicated, how, and what the CCM team received. This is the honest, uncomfortable part — surfacing information gaps without blame.
CCM faculty narrates the ICU arc — what they inherited, what they changed, complications, and pivots. Explicit attribution to upstream decisions where relevant (not punitive — educational).
Patient outcome revealed. Both faculty reflect on the full arc together — what went well, what they'd change, and what this case teaches about the EM–ICU interface.
Open discussion with residents, fellows, and attendings. Faculty moderate. Anonymous question submission option encouraged to surface uncomfortable questions.