Article review: Message for new generation of educators
An interesting article was published in Medical Education which you don’t see too often in journals. It’s a first-person reflective account of Dr. Ronald Harden’s long and internationally well-regarded career in medical education. No p-value. No sample size calculation. His experiences and lessons learned provide great insight. Here’s his advice to current and future educators. [+]
Advice for the new EM interns
One of my favorite blogs, Better in Emergency Medicine, by Dr. Rob Cooney reviewed the 1991 article entitled “The Ten Commandments in Emergency Medicine”. These commandments are timeless and still hold true today. Rob gives a helpful review of each commandment’s relevance in today’s ED. [+]
TED-Ed Brain Trust: Catalyzing an education revolution
If you have not heard of TED videos, I highly encourage you to view them. They are short, inspirational, and professional talks by leaders, scientists, and artists, who focus on bringing together the 3 worlds of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Because many of these videos focus primarily on education, TED has just built a new online community of educators called the “TED-Ed Brain Trust”. The mission is to bring together “the expertise of visionary educators, students, organizations, filmmakers and other creative professionals to guide, galvanize and ultimately lead this exciting new initiative.” [+]
Article Review: Redesigning a Powerpoint lecture using multimedia design principles
Let’s rethink how we design our Powerpoint slides. Let’s create design principles using Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning In a nutshell, people learn through two channels — words and images. This dual-channel theory suggests that people process auditory and visual stimuli separately. Each channel requires time to process information before merge into a cohesive cognitive concept. [+]
Doing well as a new EM attending physician
You are super-excited to get your first real job as an emergency physician after residency. Then this immediately turns into a nauseating, super-terrified feeling, right? After posting two entries to help medical students do well on their EM clerkship rotation, a commenter suggested that I provide a list of tips for doing well as a new EM attending physician. Although there is slightly variation for community versus academic faculty, many of the basic tenets hold true: [+]
Emergency Medicine factoids on Twitter
The medical profession is slowly incorporating Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, here are some great Twitter accounts to follow: [+]
A faculty’s perspective: Doing well on your EM clerkship
To follow-up with Dr. Connolly’s perspective about the Top 10 tips for medical students to rock the EM clerkship rotation, I thought I would post some additional tips. Here are some more pearls: 11. Take ownership of your patients. This means that you should take it upon yourself to make sure that your patient’s care is stellar, addresses key clinical and social issues, and is timely. Constantly check for your patient’s results. Don’t be the last to hear of your patient’s lab or imaging results. Figure out why there are unexpected delays. Address any psychosocial issues which may hamper your [+]
An intern’s perspective: Doing well on your EM clerkship
It’s that time of year again. When medical students interested in EM are stressing over doing well on their EM rotation. Here’s a very insightful guest post from Dr. James Connolly, who is a new PGY-1 resident at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. I’ll write my personal top-10 list next week, from the perspective of a faculty member. Many MS4 interested in emergency medicine will be starting their EM Sub-I’s in the next few weeks and are naturally wondering what to expect, and how they can be successful, both in terms of getting a strong letter of recommendation, and all while still [+]
Article review: Carnegie’s vision for medical education
In 2010, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published recommendations for the future reform of medical education. This same Carnegie Foundation had also commissioned and published the landmark 1910 Flexner report 1 on medical education, exactly 100 hears prior. Here is a summary of the four major recommendations: [+]
Article review: Professionalism in the ED through the eyes of medical students
Teaching professionalism in a formal curriculum is so much different than demonstrating professionalism in the Emergency Department. So much of what students and residents learn about professionalism are from observed behaviors of the attending physicians — that is, the hidden curriculum. In a qualitative study assessing medical student reflection essays during an EM clerkship, the authors (my friends Dr. Sally Santen and Dr. Robin Hemphill) found some startling results. The instructions to the medical students were to “think about an aspect of professionalism that has troubled you this month. Write a minimum of one half-page reflection describing what was concerning and how [+]







