Heat Emergencies: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Management

The Heat Emergencies Clinical Education CME Course is a virtual, lecture-based four half-day course to educate clinicians about how to diagnose, treat, and prevent heat-related illness. The course will describe the current evidence around all heat-related emergencies, including heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and heat syncope. The course will provide a background on the changing epidemiology of heat-related illness, varying definitions of heat, basics of thermal physiology, and individual and population based approaches to prevention of heat-related illness. 

Learning Objectives

•  Explain the epidemiology of heat related illness and associated disease processes.
•  Recognize the thermal physiology underlying clinical presentations of heat related illness.
•  Create a differential diagnosis and develop comprehensive, evidence-based management plans for all forms of heat related illness, including heat exhaustion, heat syncope, and heat stroke.
•  Describe groups at increased risk for heat related illness and develop anticipatory guidance and prevention plans.
•  Discuss the pharmacological interactions with heat-related illness and develop plans for protecting patients.
•  Identify the resources needed and best steps to take for preparedness, diagnosis and treatment of heat related illness during event medicine and in low-resources settings.
•  Explain the impacts of heat across organ systems, including impacts on mental health and behavioral health and kidney disease.
•  Apply preventive solutions for heat related illness including from a community based, public health, and health systems approach.