About Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA

Professor of Emergency Medicine
Department of Emergency Medicine
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

TLDR Book Review: Deep Work – Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Do you struggle when you try to focus on one task for a prolonged period? When you’re reading or writing a paper, are you frequently tempted by social media, a click-bait HuffPo article, or what the latest Instagram celebrities have been doing? Most of us are not used to spending large periods of time doing deep work. Like any skill, the ability to focus is something that we have to develop and train. This book, Deep Work, by Cal Newport will explain why it is so critical to develop our ability to focus deeply, and how to do it.

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2020-01-03T00:08:55-08:00Nov 8, 2019|Book Club, TLDR|

Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Switch, explains why change is so difficult and what we can do to make it easier. This little book is a must-read if you’ve ever met inexplicable resistance addressing issues as trivial as buying a new brand of coffee for the break room or as significant as enforcing the mandatory use of hand sanitizer. Is anyone actually in favor of spreading communicable diseases? Do the absence of San Francisco Hazelnut Morning Blend really warrant a call to the department chair? Why would people be so opposed to undeniably positive changes? The answer lies in understanding Riders, Elephants, and Paths. And here’s a spoiler alert: you’ll need a lot of mango.

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2020-01-03T00:09:06-08:00Feb 25, 2019|Book Club, Professional Development, TLDR|

TLDR Book Review: “Talk Like TED”

Welcome back to TLDR, where our motto is: “We read books so that you have time for Netflix.” Our premise is that most self-help, parenting, education, and life-coaching books are like chicken nuggets: 2% meat and 98% filler! This month’s book is more like cafeteria meatloaf. No matter! We’re still committed to extracting a few nutritious bits from all those ground-up gym mats. We picked through the fluff and pulled out 5 gems that are worth sharing. In his book “Talk Like TED,” Carmine Gallo promises that you too can present like a TED speaker. How do you do it? Read on.

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2020-01-03T00:11:21-08:00Oct 17, 2018|Medical Education, Professional Development, TLDR|

TLDR Book Review: “make it stick: The Science of Successful Learning”

Bookstore shelves and Amazon lists are filled with self-help titles that promise to make you a better manager, a better parent, or a better fishmonger. But most of them suffer from the same weakness: 2 pages of good practical advice is padded with 298 pages of filler.

Our new column TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) is a solution to what we call the McNugget Problem: trying to find the 5 bullet points of meaty goodness suspended within a mass of stale anecdotes, overcooked platitudes, and bad food analogies. Our TLDR goal is to find the critical take-aways in each book we review, and present them to you in a concise, easy-to-apply format. We read the books so you don’t have to!

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2020-01-03T00:11:34-08:00Aug 21, 2018|Book Club, TLDR|

Envenomations: Initial Management of Common U.S. Snakebites

Nothing says “emergency” like a bite from a venomous reptile. If you work in an area populated by snakes, which covers most of the United States and the world, then chances are good that you will see a patient with a snake bite in the Emergency Department (ED). The severity of the symptoms and the treatment vary greatly with different snakes. In this post, we will outline the ED approach to and management of common U.S. snake envenomation.

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2017-06-26T19:40:47-07:00Jun 23, 2017|Environmental|

Traumatic Bleeding in Anticoagulated Patients: 5 Other Sources Beyond the Brain

When a patient is started on anticoagulant therapy, the purpose is to prevent clot formation or propagation. Anticoagulants can improve morbidity and mortality by maintaining cardiac stent patency, reducing the propagation of pulmonary emboli, or preventing formation of intra-cardiac thrombi.^1,2 Unfortunately even after minor trauma, these medications can cause major problems. When a patient on clopidogrel is in a motor vehicle collision (MVC) or an elderly patient on warfarin falls out of their bed, the once life-improving therapy becomes potentially life-threatening. It is important for emergency care providers to maintain a high index of suspicion for life-threatening bleeds in all patients on anticoagulation following even minor injuries. The purpose of this discussion is to look beyond the intracranial hemorrhages (ICH) and to consider 5 other sources of bleeding that can occur in anticoagulated patients.

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By Christina Shenvi, MD, PhD, MBA|2017-06-04T15:51:12-07:00May 29, 2017|Heme-Oncology, Trauma|

I am Dr. Daniel Lakoff, Associate Residency Director: How I Promote Wellness in EM

Promoting wellness is a team sport. It takes more than one individual to champion it at any institution. In medicine, when a team is formed to effect change, it is called a committee. Dr. Dan Lakoff was one of the founding leaders of the council of residency wellness committee, and has also helped lead wellness efforts at his own institution. Here he shares his thoughts, his inspiration, and practical ideas that helped improve wellness at his program.
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