Heat Emergencies: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Management

Jun 16, 2025 - Jun 25, 2025

Host:

Harvard Medical School

Location:

Online

The Heat Emergencies: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Management CME Course is a virtual, lecture-based 4 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.

Who Should Attend

  • General Physicians
  • Specialty Physicians
  • Physician Assistants
  • Nurse Practitioners
  • Nurses
  • Pharmacists
  • Primary Care Physicians
  • Other

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

  • 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.