It’s not every day that you get to meet and hang out with a fun, funny, humble, spirited, and super-smart person. I first got to know Dr. Ghazala Sharieff on the lecture circuit. She’s one of the major go-to speakers for anything related to pediatric EM. When I’m stuck in a dilemma about a pediatric patient, I think – WWGD? What would Ghazala do?
A 2008 British Medical Journal article focused on practical tips and approaches to teaching in busy environments. This is especially relevant to those of us in Emergency Medicine. We are balancing trying to take care of patients, teach eager learners, and troubleshoot logistical hurdles while trying to find 30 seconds to eat dinner or have a bathroom break! I wonder how many emergency physicians have hydronephrosis at any given time on a shift... Someone should do a study.
If only I had this flowchart when I was a first-year medical student! I too have always felt that emergency physicians have a little baseline crazy in them to be happy and successful in the specialty.
This diagram has been floating around the web for years now, and I wanted to share with you. It’s a humorous (partly because there’s some truth to it) decision tree on how to choose your medical specialty. Did you decide upon the right field?
Tissue adhesives for wound closure often seem to intentionally make a bee-line straight for high-risk areas such as the eye. To avoid inadvertent application of the tissue adhesive, Dr. Hagop Afarian (UCSF-Fresno) utilizes a transparent tegaderm tape with an oval cut out of the center to provide a protective barrier. Immediately after application of the tissue adhesive, the tegaderm can be carefully peeled off to reveal a still-drying, well-circumscribed aliquot of glue over the wound. Be sure that the wound is dry, and the edges are well-apposed prior to tissue adhesive application.
There are so many interesting and inspiring EM faculty and none more so than in our own department at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Renee Hsia is a rising superstar in our department who has received numerous fancy awards and grants including the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Scholar award. She makes me feel small, insignificant, and uncultured. For instance, I thought Eritrea was a rash. Anyway, read below to see what I mean. Good thing I can at least beat her in foosball.
Do you remember when you were a medical student and had to present patient cases to the ED attending? How often did they interrupt your presentation, and did this affect your learning experience?
These were the questions that the following article by Dr. Rachel Chin (a super-mom colleague of mine at SF General) and Dr. Glen Yang answered in her 2007 publication in the Academic Emergency Medicine journal. Pubmed citation
Over the years, I have gotten to meet lots of really inspiring and fun EM faculty across the country through random encounters. Recently, I got to hang out with Dr. Rob Rogers (Univ Maryland), sitting at a beachside bar in Barbados during the Carribean EM Congress. The picture above is what he calls his “Corona commercial” shot. We were both speakers at the conference and couldn’t believe the gorgeous weather in January.
