Mastering Intensive Care: 45 - Scott Weingart - Useful mental strategies of a thoughtful ED intensivist and hugely influential podcaster

45 - Scott Weingart - Useful mental strategies of a thoughtful ED intensivist and hugely influential podcaster

Jul 22, 2019

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.

Andrew Davies

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About the Mastering Intensive Care podcast: The podcast is aimed to inspire and empower you to bring your best self to the intensive care unit, through conversations with thought-provoking guests. I hope you’ll glean insights to help you improve as a healthcare professional and as a human being so you can make a truly valuable contribution to your patient’s lives.

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Links to people, organisations and other resources mentioned:

Scott Weingart

Scott Weingart on Twitter: @emcrit

EMCrit podcast & website

Liz Crowe

Essay: The Thousand True Fans (by Kevin Kelly)

Seth Godin

SMACC

Talk by Scott Weingart “The Path to Insanity”

Talk by Scott Weingart “Kettlebells for the Brain”

Mastering Intensive Care podcast - Episode 21 with Martin Bromiley