Ep. 196: Suture Up: How The Laceration Course Is Powering Urgent Care Growth - Interview with Patrick O’Malley from EB Medicine, The Laceration Course

PCMP (00:00)
Hey, what's up everybody. You're listening to another episode of Walk-Ins. Welcome with Nick and Michael, and we're going to stitch together the perfect episode today, which I'm looking forward to. have a great guest that you'll introduce in just a second, but as always, I have to remind you, we're here to help you get more patients, deliver better care, get repeat visits and scale your clinics. Part of that.

is getting your service offering right. And Michael, if people are walking away because you're not offering something they need, you're going to lose every time. hello. Yeah. And so, and we actually, this is a little bit of a workshop episode. So there's going to be a little bit of show and tell. I'm going to tell you, tell you up front, if you're listening right now, go watch the YouTube video of this, because we're going to do a little screen sharing with Patrick today to showcase what he has to offer.

And it'll be worth a look at. anyway, just want to put that at very beginning here, because I know how people listen. They listen for that first bit. So I'm going to tell you, go listen, but go find us on YouTube for this particular episode, because you'll appreciate it. But who do we have on today? So Dr. Patrick O'Malley, he says, call me Patrick. Totally fine. We'll call you Patrick. so he has been in the medical world for like 20 plus years. ER physician type of thing where, I mean, he's been there, he's seen a lot, right? And he had some of the best training on the lacerations side of things.

And so he wanted to bring that to the masses. So he has something called the Laceration Course, and it's something that actually can help urgent cares grow their services like we talked about. But we're super excited to have you on Patrick. Welcome aboard. say hello to the Walk-Ins Welcome audience and tell us one thing about you that nobody else knows.

Patrick (01:28)
All right, so first of all, thank you guys for having me. It's really an honor to be here and hello to the Walk-Ins Welcome audience. I look forward to sharing some insights with you today. ⁓ One thing that, well, I guess a few people know about me, but I put a post on LinkedIn about this, but other than that, no one else knows. I'm a huge YouTube fan. Love Bono, Edge, the whole crew. And a couple of months ago, there was a YouTube cover band that came and played locally and I got to dress up as Bono.

and I was down at the front of the stage just kind of singing along a little bit and their bass player invited me up to get on stage. So I was dressed up as Bono's alter ego from the 90s known as Mr. McFisto. And I got to sing my favorite U2 song live with the U2 cover band. So that was a blast. My family was there, so I got to embarrass my son a little bit, which was always bonus points when I can do that.

PCMP (01:58)
that's cool.

So now you have to tell everybody what your favorite U2 song is. Okay.

Patrick (02:30)
Bad. That's the song that

I got to sing. It's ⁓ just a really powerful song and yeah, was a lot of fun to be up on stage with. Even though it wasn't the real thing, it was pretty good.

PCMP (02:40)
just as close as you're going to get for now, right? Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Well, we're glad to have you. That's a cool story. We love music around here. I got a background in music as well, but ⁓ let's talk lacerations, stitching, training, and how this can be a part of your career. kind of give us, give the audience your background, how you got to this point, and what is the laceration course?

Patrick (02:42)
That's

Sure.

All right, so I'll try to, I'll give you the quick answer. I was a tech in the emergency department before I went to medical school at Carolina's Medical Center in Charlotte. And that was just the most fascinating thing that I could ever see. And I just loved hanging out with the residents and watching them repair lacerations. And there was an upper level surgery resident who let me suture someone up in the trauma ICU late one evening, very supervised, but that really just kind of gave me the bug for this.

So I went to medical school and I was fortunate enough to return to Carolina's Medical Center for Residency. In the first week of our intern year, we had a five day laceration course. And that really gave us as residents and interns, the core knowledge and the confidence to be able to hit the ground running and actually be productive ⁓ while we were interns so that we didn't have to go and ask our attendings ⁓ simple questions. We already had that core knowledge. So that always stuck with me.

And a number of years later, I developed a wound irrigation device. So lacerations really are the thing that brought me to emergency medicine. And then I think it was four five years ago, I was trying to think of something else that I could do entrepreneurially. And I was like, why not teach others who didn't have the fortune of doing an emergency medicine residency.

and really kind of expand my knowledge and be able to provide this to a larger audience. So I developed and created the Laceration Course. It's a very, very scientific and technical name there. But it really, it kind of, ⁓ what's the word, exemplifies the meaning of the course and what it entails. So I put that together and I started selling it myself.

PCMP (04:37)
Yes.

Patrick (04:49)
and quickly realized that the business side of it, you know, still working full-time clinically in the emergency department, we were in the throes of COVID during that time. So I partnered with EB Medicine, which is a long-standing continuing medical education company. And it really allowed me to focus on the content side of things and being able to produce content, work on the course, and they handle, you know, more of the business side. But together, ⁓ it...

I'm present on Zoom calls, discovery calls, working with urgent care groups to be able to share ⁓ the story of the laceration course and how it can make an impact for their clinics and really give their team members the confidence to be able to do this themselves.

PCMP (05:32)
Man, that is a loaded course. So you're training these facilities through coursework, through hands-on. Well, I say hands-on, like video hands-on,

Patrick (05:43)
Yeah, it's

a combination of both. you know, there are other suturing courses that are out there, but I like to say that, you know, my 12 year old son, he knows how to do a horizontal mattress stitch, but I'm not overly comfortable letting him manage a full clinic of patients and all the other aspects of this. So when I created the laceration course, my goal for it was to give a clinician everything that they needed to know.

PCMP (06:02)
Sure.

Patrick (06:12)
So we talk about anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, all the ologies that are necessary to really bolster that core clinical content knowledge. So it's a long course. It's very comprehensive. There's a lot of information there. And this new reiteration that we did and just completed, it's eight hours of content. But we go above and beyond just teaching somebody how to suture. The art of suturing is it takes time, it takes practice.

but we also include billing, coding, charting. We've got a 40 minute discussion with an attorney who's an emergency physician named Bill Sullivan. And we talk about the MediCo legal aspects of laceration management, the things that can get you in trouble and how to avoid those. So really wanted to create the definitive resource that is really plug and play.

So asynchronously, anybody can log in. They can watch the video modules at their own leisure. We've got animated videos. We've got cadaver videos as well. So I really wanted to create the definitive resource for the urgent care audience here.

PCMP (07:20)
Sounds like a very powerful course. Eight hours of video content is no small feat to put together for any industry, much less have eight hours of content on suturing and everything about it. ⁓ So, so first question for me really is what kind of impact is this making on the clinics that are, that are using this course so far?

Patrick (07:40)
That's a wonderful question and I've got a great example for that. One of the things, now I've left the emergency department, so I'm no longer working clinically so that I can focus on this full time. And one of the things that I really enjoy doing is connecting with people who have gone through the course. One, I wanna get feedback from them. What was helpful, what was not helpful so that I can continue to evolve and make it better. But what's really impactful for me and for them,

is to be able to learn how this course has made their role as an urgent care clinician better. ⁓ There's an individual at one of our customers, and I've had several conversations with her. She reached out to me and she just said, hey, thank you so much for putting this course together. It's really helped me. And I just said, hey, would you be open to a phone call?

So we started bouncing some things back and forth. And for her particular instance, and I hear this from a lot of other people, she said, before I went through the laceration course, I would routinely send every single laceration away. I didn't get the training in my nurse practitioner program. I may have had like a day and a half of shadowing with my medical director at my job. And it's just something that I didn't feel comfortable doing. But when I went through the laceration course,

I now have the confidence to be able to do this. So in the three months that she, since she had taken the laceration course, she's taken care of five lacerations that she previously would have sent away. And I just asked her, was like, how does this make you feel as an urgent care provider or clinician? And she said, I've got a new found freedom.

to be able to do these things. And I don't have that deer in the headlights look and I'm not scared to be able to do this. I know that I can. And she said that she's even gone back to the modules of the course just to be able to kind of refresh her memory on a technique that she knows that she's gonna need to utilize for that particular repair. So for me, it's incredibly rewarding professionally knowing that this product that we put out into the world is making a big difference. ⁓

for an individual clinician. And we hear the same thing from the testimonials that we get is that it's really helped the urgent care industry be able to take care of these things that they previously didn't have any experience or comfort or confidence in doing so.

PCMP (10:10)
I love that. Yeah, because I mean, the reality of it is if they're not confident doing any type of suturing of any sort, it'll send them to the ER. And then that's a, yeah, and that's a poor patient experience. And then that patient will never come back to that urgent care because like, well, they didn't help me then they're not going to help me next time. And they'll move on. ⁓ And that's lost value.

Patrick (10:16)
Send them to the ER. It's a knee-jerk reaction.

And

that's a great point. And that's something, know, I was sharing with you before we started, you know, working in the emergency, I've been heavily involved in the urgent care space. I spent three years on the board of directors for the College of Urgent Care Medicine. I go to all the urgent care, you national and regional organizations. So I've got a ⁓ very strong affinity and love and admiration for the urgent care industry and what, you know, what everybody does.

But working in the emergency department, you it's not uncommon for a patient to get referred to the emergency department for a laceration. And I encourage, you know, for myself and I encourage my emergency medicine colleagues to not bash the urgent care whenever a patient comes in like that. You know, we're not in their shoes. We don't know the whole story. And it's very important to, you know, to not denigrate and give them a hard time. But what I try to do is I try to listen.

you know, hey, they sent you from urgent care. Yeah, I'm really pissed off. had to wait here for four hours and then, you you put in three sutures and now I'm gone. Why couldn't they have done that? And I really think that it's important for us as medical professionals to not put down what someone else did or did not do. You know, they may not have had the resources, you know, they're autoclave. They may not have had the instruments. They may not have had the suture material. Bottom line, they may just not have had the confidence.

So, you what I try to say to them is, well, you know, it's okay, you know, we're here to take care of you, we're gonna do a good job and get you out of here. But what they tell me is they say, I'm not going back there again. If they couldn't do what you just did, then they've lost me as a customer, as a patient. So I think that this is an opportunity for, you know, urgent care to really, you know, have their clinicians.

PCMP (11:55)
Right.

Right. Right.

Patrick (12:20)
be proficient in this skill set because I think a lot of times if you look at, you know, different urgent cares websites, they say clearly we manage lacerations. Well, you get there and you can't.

PCMP (12:28)
We have written

content for our urgent care clients about lacerations. Yeah, for sure.

Patrick (12:33)
Yeah.

So that's a, know, if you're advertising that you, you know, this is a marketing show. If you're advertising that you can manage lacerations, you better be certain that your clinicians know how to do this.

PCMP (12:46)
Yeah, we have a we have a client here locally and they have ⁓ Bethany on staff there. She is her favorite thing to do is lacerations. Like she gets excited about it. Yeah, I feel like that's a like that's a gift. It's almost like art, right? So because if you do it because it can be learned to me, it's it's like artwork where if you do it right, it's going to actually look really good. Right.

Patrick (12:58)
I can relate, I love it, it's a lot of fun.

And it's

a lot of fun. it's kind of like pressure washing, as men, love pressure washing, right? It's immediate satisfaction. You get to see the end result immediately. Now you do get to see the wound come together. And another thing that I'm a big fan of is doing follow-up, getting the patient's number, taking a picture of the wound. And then two weeks later, if you don't have an opportunity to see them when they come in for their suture removal, but you

PCMP (13:17)
That's right. I did that last weekend.

Yep.

Patrick (13:39)
Give them a text, give them a call. Hey, I'd love to see the picture of your wound. And then that gives you even a further understanding of what you did. What could I have done better? It's a great opportunity to learn. And that's another teaching point that we try to reinforce throughout the laceration course is get follow-up. One, from a patient satisfaction perspective, man, patients love it when you call them as the provider. ⁓ then it gives you an opportunity to see the end results of your work.

PCMP (14:02)
Yeah, that's true.

Well, we've been preaching the police call your client back. Yeah, call the patient back. Call your patient back. But also like if they're in, know, I didn't even cross my mind, but the slaceration type thing, it is an opportunity to have to bring that patient back into the clinic for follow up, which is great because that's one of the biggest challenges urgent cares have is they can't, they're like one and done visits usually where there's not much, there's not an additional appointment of some sort, but this technically should qualify for that pretty easily because they, yeah.

Patrick (14:31)
Mm-hmm.

It does, yeah. For a

large, overwhelming majority of the wounds, they do come back in for staple removal or suture removal. Now, there are some select wounds that use absorbable sutures and they don't need to come back. Or if you're using dermabond or sterri strips or Close-X, those are things that they don't have to come back in.

But when they do come back in for suture removal, your clinician, whoever it was that did it, if they're able to take a look and remove the sutures themselves, it's a great opportunity to get some follow-up and just kind of check in on them and see how they're doing.

PCMP (15:12)
Okay. I was going to say, well, I want to talk about the course now because it's, one thing for you to sit across the table from somebody or them look over your shoulder while you're suturing somebody. And then you hand them some kind of a plastic arm or something like that, that they can practice on. It's something entirely different to do this over a video.

Patrick (15:15)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

PCMP (15:32)
So let's talk about this course for a second. You've talked about it being eight hours. You've talked about the legal ramifications of it, but how can somebody take a video like this and then go and put it into practice and into play and feel confident?

Patrick (15:43)
Yeah, great question. And we know that from adult learning principles, it's great to have the core knowledge, but for something like this, it's kind like watching YouTube videos to learn how to play guitar, which I'm very poorly learning how to do. I can sit there and watch a thousand hours of Eddie Van Halen or The Edge or whoever, but unless I pick up the guitar and start playing myself, I'm never gonna get any better.

PCMP (16:04)
Right.

Patrick (16:09)
So we decided to include a custom made silicone suture pad whenever somebody purchases the laceration course. So we collect their street address and we send them a suture pad. And it comes with all the instruments, it comes with a stapler and I think around 20 packs of suture. So we know that in order for them to become competent with this, they have to put in the reps, they have to put in the sutures, they have to practice it.

So in one of the modules, which is all the different techniques, that's the homework assignment. We've got a 72 page downloadable workbook that accompanies the course. And for that module, in module number four, that's their homework assignment. You know, do 20 interrupted sutures, do 20 horizontal, vertical, half buried horizontal mattress sutures, and all these different things so that you can get that practice in and really try to hone those fine motor skills of being able to do these things over and over.

before they start putting the needle into the skin of the patient that they have in front of them.

PCMP (17:15)
So I know this sounds probably like it's going to be a stupid question, I swear it's coming from a place of memory and experience. Well, first of let me ask the question. Do you see more children getting lacerations than adults?

Patrick (17:31)
Oh man, in the emergency department that I worked at for the last eight years, I would say it was probably, I'm just pulling the number out here. I'd say it's probably 80 % adult, 20 % pediatrics.

PCMP (17:50)
Okay, that was way off.

Patrick (17:52)
If alcohol was available for children, then it would probably be a lot higher. alcohol is a major driving force in emergency department visits for traumatic injuries and lacerations. So yeah, I would say it was probably about 80%. The majority are adults.

PCMP (17:56)
Skipp them.

Okay. Well, then that makes my next question a lot less relevant, but I'll ask it anyway. How do you simulate a screaming child? That won't say still this. This was me. I was probably seven or eight years old. I busted my chin and I was screaming bloody murder because they were stitching up my chin. And then I finally wore myself out and I'm like, when are we going to start? They're like, we're done.

Patrick (18:11)
Okay? Ask it anyways.

boy. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, great question. children pose just ⁓ a whole set of challenges, I guess is a great way to put it. within the last, ⁓ within the last rations course, we actually include what we call kid bits, which are pediatric specific pearls of wisdom. So things like, you know, using your topical anesthetic gel, and that's something that's easy, you know, it allows you to, to, to place sutures or staples.

PCMP (18:40)
Right. I mean, that's just standalone sentence right there.

Okay.

Patrick (19:03)
with minimal discomfort. There's a thing called the hair apposition technique for scalp lacerations where you can actually just take pieces of hair on either side of the wound and kind of pull them together and then use a little drop of Dermabond to secure it. ⁓ And then, in urgent care, child life specialists are not readily available, but in the emergency department setting they are. But even little tips and tricks like using mom's ⁓ iPhone or tablet to help distract.

There's a little technique called the pillowcase cape where you actually take their arms and put them into a pillowcase and they lie on the pillowcase. There's another technique called a parental papoose. So there's a lot of things that can be utilized. What's that?

Straight jag, exactly. And there's some other less invasive wound closure devices that are available, like a thing called ClosAX, which is, I've used that probably half a dozen time on children, and I can repair that wound literally in less than two minutes. So there's a lot of things, and I think that, especially the urgent care audience, who came, largely came from a nurse practitioner or a PA school.

⁓ they may not have just had that exposure to some of these things that are out there. So I think that that's an important thing that I wanted to include is to give them access and awareness of some cutting edge techniques and different devices that are available for wound closure.

PCMP (20:34)
So two questions, because I always have questions. Do you have something you want to So one question is, do you find that most urgent cares don't offer the service?

Patrick (20:45)
I think that most probably do offer the service, but it depends who's working that shift.

PCMP (20:53)
Yeah, that's I was about to say because I imagine they may offer the service like you put on the website, right? Or they have a pricing model tied to it. probably not every single staff person that's supposed to be able to do it is there to do it. Because we hear that a lot of times just from not just suturing like physicals and stuff like that. Well, actually, that doctor's not in today. Can you come back tomorrow? Which in a suture situation? No, I can't come back tomorrow.

Patrick (21:00)
Right.

No, can't.

This needs immediate attention.

PCMP (21:21)
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I imagine like it's, because it's one of the things you kind of expect an urgent care to do. But like you said, the half time they're probably not going to do it because they're either afraid to almost, or they just hired that new nurse practitioner and they just had that checkbox on what they said they could do. But then they really, when it comes down to it, like, I'm not comfortable enough to do this.

Patrick (21:28)
Mm-hmm.

Right. And so I listened to the podcast that you all did with Alan Ayers, who was just, every time I read a LinkedIn post or I hear him talk, I mean, there's always knowledge that gets transferred there. And a couple of years ago, I think he had put something out in the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine. And there really has been a seismic shift in urgent care staffing. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was 85 % physician

PCMP (21:49)
Yeah.

Patrick (22:12)
15 % APP. 10 years later, those numbers have swapped. It's now 15 % physician and 85 % APP. And a lot of the physician roles are, you they are taking care of patients, but they may be more clinical oversight. They may be, you know, medical director overseeing 10 nurse practitioners who are working at different sites. So there's been a seismic shift there.

And the bottom line is that the training is just different. It's not integrating ⁓ the APP model at all whatsoever in any way, but seven years of training is different from two years of training. It just is. So there's a ⁓ great opportunity there for training to get everybody up to speed and practice at the same level. And that's where an online course really allows for that to ⁓ take place.

PCMP (22:50)
Right. Right.

Patrick (23:08)
And there was a second part of that question that you had mentioned. I can't remember what it was. My apology.

PCMP (23:14)
Well, so I wanted to, I never asked it. So you didn't, you didn't forget it. We just hadn't gotten there yet. The other one was, is part of the strategy of this podcast are to help our clinics make more money, right? To scale their clinics. And are you finding that this course is allowing clinics to set themselves apart from their competition? Okay.

Patrick (23:16)
Okay, alright. Okay.

I believe it does. And

the discussion that I alluded to just recently with the nurse practitioner, in three months, she's taken care of five lacerations. So let's do a little extrapolation here. In one year, that's 20. Let's say you have three clinicians that work at your clinic, that's 60 lacerations that are not being referred to the emergency department. What's the revenue on 60 lacerations?

do the math. And for a relatively small investment, I think that's a pretty good ROI. ⁓

PCMP (24:03)
right? ⁓

And then the

part that you can't calculate is that returning patient, right? Because they were so well taken care of. Cause that's something that we deal with too, where, Hey, we got new patients in your door and we'll never see that patient coming back necessarily because it's beyond what we were doing. And so when you, cause we even tell our clients like, Hey, we're going those new patients in your door and then you're going to see it grow like a wave over time.

Patrick (24:12)
Exactly. Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

PCMP (24:34)
and just

keep going because now they're confident in what they had, right? And they're going to try to come back to you assuming you're doing good work at the same time. But yeah, same boat, right? Where it says 60 on the front end, but reality, that could be quite a bit more over time. it works out.

Patrick (24:48)
Absolutely.

And then we're all familiar with the power of local Facebook groups. You get that disgruntled ⁓ patient who comes into the Facebook and, I went to Acme Urgent Care and they told me that they couldn't repair this laceration. I went to the ER, they put in two sutures. I'm never going back there again. And then all the dogs start piling on.

PCMP (24:55)
That's right. Yep.

Patrick (25:15)
And how do you repair that reputation from word of mouth?

PCMP (25:15)
Yeah, they do.

I say you have to stitch it up. You got close. All right. Speaking of speaking of which, cause I want to make sure that we have plenty of time to do this. You have full capability to share your screen and I want to see this course. And for our YouTubers that are watching online, I want them to be able to see it. So here's what I mean. I'm going to shut up and I'm going to let you share your screen. And we'll let you talk through what you're showing us.

Patrick (25:22)
You gotta stitch it up.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay,

sounds good. So let me switch over here and I'm gonna share my screen. Okay, so first of all, yeah, well, you go to ebmedicine.net, that's the website where the course lives, log in, and this is what you see. So the last ration course brought to you by EB Medicine.

PCMP (25:52)
There you go. Got it.

Patrick (26:08)
And then the video player just is here in the middle of the screen. You can enlarge that to full screen and watch that. It's also mobile device compatible. ⁓ Each of the modules, so there are a total of 12 modules and each one can be watched individually, separately on your own time schedule. But each of the videos has its own

CME credit. So let's say you're a seasoned, you know, emergency professional, you're working in urgent care now, and you don't need to go through every single module, but you really want to focus on mitigating risk, safeguarding your charting and the billing and coding aspects. So you can go in and just do those modules and get individual credit. You don't have to watch the entire eight hour course just to get, you know, a portion of the credit.

So each of the modules are ⁓ introduction. You can see right here, these are all the, let's see here, I can try to start this here. All right, so we talk about the background, the basics, preparing for repair, how to set yourself up for success, all the different supplies that you need, the essential repair skills. The two things that really give people anxiety are fingers and faces.

So I wanted to dedicate a lot of time to both of those areas. You've got your mandolin slicer injuries, how do you deal with those? ⁓ Eyebrow, eyelid lacerations and things like that. And then we talk about high risk wounds such as animal bites, human bites, puncture wounds. There's really a lot of concern with injuries that occur in saltwater and freshwater. So I talk about some of the things that really

PCMP (27:33)
Mm.

gives me anxiety. Yeah, I was gonna say, feel that. anxiety thinking about it.

Patrick (28:02)
require some extra diligence, how to take care of the wound afterwards, the mitigating risk with my attorney colleague, Dr. Sullivan. He also did the safeguarding charting. We talked about right sizing reimbursement. And then lastly, the case presentations. Now, some of these are peppered throughout the course, but I really spend a lot of time talking about the medical decision-making process that's involved with laceration management.

because a lot of times people, they're just kind of left to the wolves and try to figure it out. So I really want to share the knowledge that I've learned over the last 20 years with how to think through these types of cases to really make them more efficient and to get them thinking about what's going on so that they can provide better care. ⁓ Now, I'll go back to the course and I just want to demonstrate here with the essential repair skills. We took a lot of effort.

to bring world-class visuals to our audience. So within each of these different techniques, I introduced the topic and the technique, talk about it for a little bit, and then we have an animated video, and then we have a cadaver video. So really being able to give people different ways to analyze, they can use the toggle bar and go back and forth, pause it, but let me just turn this into full screen here. And these are the...

PCMP (29:23)
I was

seeing a cadaver right now. do the cadaver because that'll flag YouTube. Yeah, it will flag YouTube.

Patrick (29:26)
I'll do the... Yeah, let's see. Yeah, so I'll just go to the...

let's see. So parallel lacerations. All So these are for more complex wounds, but this is what the animated video looks like. And for each of these modules, I'm simply doing a voiceover and kind of talking them through the technique as we're going. But I can take my cursor bar here and I can go back and forth.

and I can really analyze and study what is going on here. So from a teaching perspective, a medical director could take this video and go through it and spend 10 or 15 minutes talking about each of these different techniques. So there's no other course or platform that has this type of quality from an audio visual standpoint. And then next, is it okay to go to the cadaver video? It's just scan. Okay. All right.

PCMP (30:20)
Yeah, why not? Let's just see what happens.

Go ahead.

Patrick (30:23)
So this is me at a cadaver lab in Charlotte. I went up, I spent an entire day, I lugged all of my recording, audio, video equipment up there. And then I just went through and demonstrated a handful of different suturing techniques ⁓ for this particular module. And it really gives the learner the ability to get...

Real world, with the animations, they're great, they're fantastic, they're very clean, but then with the cadaver, it allows them to see what real tissue looks like when you're manipulating it.

So that's kind of a quick run through the course. And the last thing to mention here is that we do have a workbook, which is a 72 page companion, basically. So it's interactive. Each of the modules is represented. There's a QR code that takes you directly to the course. And then another thing that we have included here at the end of each module is an action item.

PCMP (30:59)
Wow.

Patrick (31:26)
So we really want to give the learner something that they can take to the clinic to start reinforcing and implementing these techniques in real time.

PCMP (31:36)
man, that's good stuff. So somebody wants to go through this course. They're interested in it. They want to add this to their clinic. ⁓ You had made mention, I think you called it the dog days of summer, which are coming to a close. Tell me about that real quick. Cause we want people to be able to experience this. This is good.

Patrick (31:48)
Yeah, yes. Okay. Okay, sure.

Sure. And I think you're going to put my contact information in the show notes. You can always email me, you know, as an individual, they can go in and buy it. But we also thoroughly enjoy working with large groups to help solve their onboarding and their ongoing education needs. So feel free to reach out to me, I'd be happy to, you know, set up a call and learn what some of your pain points are and see what we can do to help. ⁓ But I'll switch over.

PCMP (31:56)
Yep, for sure.

Patrick (32:18)
So right now, EB Medicine, which is EBmedicine.net, you can go there and they have a dog days of summer sale. So for $1 for seven days, you can get access to all of their journals, which are Emergency Medicine Practice, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Practice, and Evidence-Based Urgent Care. It's the only journal of its kind that is specific to urgent care medicine. So you can do that for $1 for seven days, know, kick the tires.

See what you think and if it's something that's interesting to you, please feel free to reach out.

PCMP (32:54)
love it. Yeah, we're going to drop that information in the show notes. So if you're listening or you're on YouTube, kick down to the show notes and you'll be able to access this. The dog days of summer, the dollar for seven days. That's a killer deal. ⁓ And Patrick, man, I've really enjoyed talking about this for some weird reason. I don't know why. it's like, got like a little like, am so glad I'm not in America. When the good never popped up, was like, this makes me uncomfortable.

Patrick (33:21)
Well, yeah, if y'all ever want to look at some really interesting images, just let me know. I've got plenty and ⁓ patient consent, of course, for all of them. ⁓ But it's a visual skill. ⁓ You do have to see and kind of go through and gain a comfort level with seeing some of these gorier injuries. ⁓ But again, once you've got the confidence to be able to do it, it's a really rewarding aspect of ⁓ acute care medicine.

PCMP (33:49)
I'd go straight to the video of the one that like got his hand chopped off and they sew it back on. That's where I'd go. Although I feel like that's not happening at an urgent care. That's probably not an emergency room for sure.

Patrick (33:57)
No, ⁓ We'll

send those to the hand specialist for sure.

PCMP (34:04)
I love it. love it. Patrick. Thank you so much for being a guest today. I've enjoyed this. ⁓ Keep us posted on the progress. Cause I know with any kind of video course, you're, constantly making updates and improvements and refinements. And you get those requests that come in for something very specific. sure. And I think, I think there's an opportunity six, eight months from now to have you back on ⁓ just, just for the updates. Yeah. We'd love to have you. Awesome.

Patrick (34:12)
Absolutely.

Thank

⁓ huh.

Absolutely, would love to. Yeah. I think one thing,

I don't know if we mentioned this or not, but just, you know, another thing that we have the ability to do are remote suturing workshops. And I don't, as far as I know, you know, there's no one else that is offering this. So, you know, I'm able to essentially be anywhere in the world and help, you know, a group of clinicians who are together or, you know, separate.

PCMP (34:36)
Okay.

Patrick (34:51)
⁓ to really be able to do question and answer. We can go through some didactic, but I can pull up my overhead camera and be able to demonstrate different suturing techniques in real time and be able to answer any questions that they've got. So, one of my missions with this is to really push the envelope and see what we can do to provide access to this education wherever you are, really anywhere in the world.

PCMP (35:01)
well.

Your next step is to get a AI ⁓ powered arm robot that they can have on the location that you can send to them and you can just show them in real time. That'd be cool.

Patrick (35:27)
It's a man, I'll tell you what,

with all the AI stuff, it's really fascinating. did, I ⁓ normally wear readers and I got some of the Ray-Ban AI glasses. And that's another thing that I'm able to do. So you can actually see my point of view and I can live stream that and you can actually see what my eyes are seeing as I'm suturing. So it's a lot of fun, a lot of fun play around with.

PCMP (35:36)
yeah.

That's been awesome.

That's kind of fantastic. Actually. They're coming for all of our jobs,

I'm just kidding. just Patrick. I've really enjoyed having you on like, like Nick's I'll echo what Nick said. I'm like, we'll need to bring you back on in like six, eight months to see what, it's progressed over time. But thank you again for coming on. I know our audience enjoyed this. I'm really excited for the ones who watch on YouTube. Cause what you were showing there, even this like click a real quick part where he's like, well, here's my camera right now. I'm doing them. I can do virtually for you. ⁓ that's just so cool to me.

Patrick (36:00)
sure thing. Would love to.

PCMP (36:18)
but thank you again for coming on. The only part words for our audience.

Patrick (36:18)
Well, thank you. My pleasure.

⁓ let's see here. You know, for the individual clinician, I just want to instill in you that you've got the ability to do this. And sometimes you just need the encouragement, you need the knowledge, but you just got to try it out. And I think for clinic owners, you know, invest in your clinicians because if you invest in them, they're going to be more loyal. And I hear this all the time. You know, give them the tools and the resources that they need to succeed.

PCMP (36:31)
That's good.

Patrick (36:52)
And especially when it comes to education, ⁓ it's not an area to cut corners on. And a lot of these people who are working in urgent care, they may be new to medicine, they may be new to urgent care, and really try to support them because it really does go a long way with letting them know that they are valued. So I would just encourage you to ⁓ invest in your clinicians, especially with their education.

PCMP (37:18)
Love it. Awesome. Well, with that, we will part ways and we will see y'all on the next episode. Patrick, thank you again for coming, man. We'll see you soon. All right. Thank you.

Patrick (37:26)
Awesome. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Thank you.