PSPEM 3rd Annual Scientific Convention
Scientific Objectives
Two days bridging clinical mastery and system-level preparedness across trauma, disaster, and crisis care for children.
Scientific Program
Trauma
Readiness
2026 Pediatric Resuscitation Updates: PALS and Beyond
Master the 2025 PALS and ACLS algorithm revisions through evidence-based updates in high-performance CPR, coordinated team dynamics, and post-resuscitation care strategies. This comprehensive plenary translates emerging resuscitation science into actionable protocols adapted for resource-limited and mixed-age emergency settings. Equip yourself with practical implementation strategies to enhance pediatric cardiac arrest survival, optimize team response efficiency, and strengthen resuscitation readiness across diverse clinical environments throughout the Philippines.
Stabilizing the Injured Child: The First 15 Minutes
Navigate the critical first fifteen minutes of pediatric trauma care where timely intervention determines survival outcomes. This evidence-driven lecture delivers structured assessment protocols, pediatric-tailored airway management, hemorrhage control techniques, and rapid vascular access strategies essential for stabilization. Gain decisive trauma leadership skills, early team activation frameworks, and standardized protocols that reduce preventable deaths. Strengthen your clinical readiness to manage multisystem trauma through practical decision-making tools adapted for both hospital and field emergency settings.
Safe Pediatric Transport: From Stabilization to Transfer
Transform pediatric interfacility transfers through evidence-based stabilization protocols, comprehensive documentation systems, and strategic escort team coordination. This essential session explores pre-transfer checklists, communication standards, and risk mitigation strategies that ensure continuity of care from departure to destination. Learn to integrate national referral frameworks with quality assurance benchmarks, establishing coordinated transfer systems that prioritize safety, timeliness, and accountability. Bridge hospital gaps and improve outcomes for critically ill and injured children during transport.
Complex Resuscitations in Crisis: Trauma Beyond the Textbook
This high-intensity panel presents dual-mechanism pediatric trauma scenarios requiring simultaneous management of multiple life-threatening conditions. Through realistic case discussions involving combined blunt trauma, submersion injury, and severe electrical burns, participants explore evidence-based strategies for airway management, circulatory stabilization, and arrhythmia control. Expert panelists model critical decision-making under pressure and demonstrate effective leadership and teamwork, integrating trauma, drowning, and burn resuscitation guidelines to optimize survival in complex, multi-system pediatric emergencies.
Simultaneous Sessions
Addresses the growing demand for mental health competency in pediatric emergency care — identifying early warning signs of psychological distress, differentiating behavioral from medical causes, and managing acute crises safely. Covers de-escalation, stabilization, and appropriate pharmacologic interventions, with emphasis on nonsuicidal self-injury, structured risk assessment, and referral pathways.
A comprehensive overview of early sepsis identification and evidence-based resuscitation — recognizing subtle warning signs, applying validated screening tools, and executing the Surviving Sepsis Campaign's first-hour bundle. Integrates fluid resuscitation, antibiotic initiation, hemodynamic monitoring, and escalation protocols to strengthen institutional sepsis pathways.
Rapid, evidence-based management of pediatric seizure emergencies from initial stabilization to advanced care. Reviews airway, glucose, and perfusion assessment during active convulsions; AAP and ILAE guidance on first- and second-line antiseizure medications; and escalation pathways for refractory status epilepticus, with emphasis on safe sedation and transfer readiness.
Equips clinicians to identify, document, and respond to suspected child abuse and neglect — red flags for physical, emotional, and sexual maltreatment, proper documentation and evidence preservation, differentiating accidental from inflicted injuries, and timely multidisciplinary referral to child protection units.
Hands-on training in rapid trauma assessment and stabilization — systematic trauma surveys, safe patient handling, and bleeding control using tourniquets and pressure dressings, with focus on cervical immobilization, transport safety, and teamwork during trauma transfers.
Revisits the latest Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) algorithm updates and performance strategies — effective bag-mask ventilation, airway positioning, and steps for non-responders, with structured debriefing and team communication to reduce human error.
Manage pediatric airways safely under pressure — optimal positioning, bag-mask ventilation, and adjuncts (oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal, supraglottic). Addresses predictors of a difficult airway and escalation strategies, emphasizing teamwork and preparation.
Recognize and manage pediatric cardiac arrhythmias — ECG rhythm-strip interpretation and simulation to differentiate arrhythmias, identify instability, and execute timely interventions including synchronized cardioversion and defibrillation.
Disaster
Response
From Then to Now: The Changing Face of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in the Philippines
Explore the transformative journey of pediatric emergency medicine in the Philippines from pioneering hospital units to today's specialized emergency networks. This visionary plenary examines critical system reforms, policy milestones, and international readiness benchmarks while highlighting lessons from national programs and interhospital collaboration. Discover the roadmap toward a sustainable, inclusive, and unified pediatric emergency system with measurable readiness standards that strengthen care delivery across all healthcare levels nationwide.
Disaster Response in Pediatrics: From Mass Casualty to Command
Strengthen pediatric disaster preparedness through structured mass casualty triage, incident command activation, and seamless interfacility coordination. This systems-focused session delivers practical applications of JumpSTART and SALT algorithms, surge capacity protocols, and command communication frameworks essential for large-scale emergencies. Drawing from national and regional case experiences, learn to integrate prehospital, hospital, and command centers into unified response networks, translating preparedness plans into lifesaving execution during pediatric mass casualty events.
Readiness in Real Time: Preparing Your Pediatric ED for the Next Disaster
This lecture provides a practical roadmap for achieving real-time readiness in pediatric emergency departments facing natural or man-made disasters. Participants learn to conduct readiness assessments, organize drills, and utilize pediatric readiness scorecards to evaluate system performance. The session discusses communication, logistics, and surge planning integrated within hospital-wide emergency operations, underscoring consistent leadership, resource optimization, and continuous evaluation — ensuring pediatric teams respond efficiently and safely when the next crisis strikes.
Ground Zero Pediatrics: Coordinating Response from Collapse to Containment
This panel immerses participants in a simulated dual-disaster environment — an earthquake causing mass pediatric casualties followed by a hospital fire requiring urgent evacuation. Panelists dissect the operational, ethical, and psychosocial dimensions of disaster coordination, focusing on pediatric-specific triage systems such as JumpSTART and SALT. The discussion emphasizes hospital incident command activation, communication flow, and resource prioritization in concurrent crises — teaching attendees how to sustain clinical function and compassion amid chaos while ensuring safety, ethical care, and continuity of operations.
Simulation Tracks
This simulation track builds the prehospital and transport competencies that keep critically ill and injured children stable from the field to definitive care. Learning objectives: apply structured prehospital stabilization principles prior to transfer; demonstrate effective communication and handover techniques between referring and receiving teams; and implement safe pediatric transport practices emphasizing coordination, equipment readiness, and patient monitoring.
This session provides a structured approach to the recognition and management of environmental and toxicologic emergencies in children. Through simulation and case-based instruction, participants learn to identify clinical patterns of poisoning, exposure-related crises, and envenomation syndromes. The workshop emphasizes stabilization strategies, antidote administration, and evidence-based toxicology protocols, with practice in systematic diagnostic and therapeutic interventions — integrating clinical reasoning with procedural skill for effective, timely management of toxic and environmental emergencies.
This hands-on workshop immerses participants in the practical use of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) for real-time pediatric emergency decision-making. Learners develop proficiency in ultrasound-guided vascular access, focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST), and lung ultrasound for rapid diagnosis of critical conditions. The session also introduces POCUS applications for shock and cardiac evaluation, emphasizing hemodynamic interpretation to guide resuscitation — transforming ultrasound into a life-saving extension of the clinical examination.
When every second
counts
Building a nationally integrated, globally aligned pediatric emergency system capable of saving lives across all levels of care.