Dr. Rahul Patwari reviews evidence-based medicine (EBM) concepts specifically regarding treatment studies, as guided by the JAMA Users Guide to the Medical Literature manual. In these first three videos, Rahul provides a brief introduction to the concept of treatment studies and then discusses (1) how to assess whether the results are valid and (2) calculating the risks/benefits of treatment based on the IST-3 trial?
There are incredible people doing incredibly inspiring work in Emergency Medicine. I wanted to restart the hero series, which had fallen off the radar a few years ago, featuring amazing people in our specialty. Today’s hero spotlight is on Dr. Todd Raine (@RaineDoc). He is a Staff Physician and IT Coordinator at the Providence Healthcare Department of EM and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of EM. Despite these notable accomplishments, he is famous in the social media world for his innovative creation of a Google-based EM search engine GoogleFOAM.com, which many of us use to perform social media site searches online in the field of EM. His search engine is a “unified search of all FOAM sources on the Web.”
These two videos continue on the theme of envenomations. Watch these great videos on the consequences and management of bites by spiders and Hymenoptera species (bees, wasps, ants). Hymenoptera bites can cause all sorts of complications, but one of the most worrisome includes anaphylaxis, which is also reviewed in the video.
There are about 8,000 snakebites per year in the United States and 10% are fatal (see comments)! If this doesn’t scare you enough to view these videos, watch these videos to see Dr. Rahul’s Patwari’s amazing digital drawing skills. In addition to a brief 4-minute overview on snake bites, Rahul also goes more in depth about crotalids (rattlesnakes) and elapids (coral snakes) specifically.
In the Emergency Department, we too often under-estimate our patients’ likelihood for intimate partner violence (IPV). Unfortunately, there is no perfect screening test to detect this. So one must maintain a high index of suspicion. Once you detect it, what questions should you ask to ensure her/his safety and how do you optimize the resources available to her/him?
Created by Trevor Wilson (UCSF medical student) and Dr. Beth Kaplan (UCSF/SFGH), the following PV pocket card reviews how to screen, document, intervene, and provide resources for the patient. Learn the “SAFE” questions.1,2
Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.
Welcome a new superstar blogger, Dr. Todd Seigel (@ToddSeigelMD), to the ever-growing ALiEM team. I first met Todd at the recent Society of Academic Emergency Medicine meeting. At that time, he was an already established clinician-scholar-educator at Brown University. He had already graduated from residency and was returning to fellowship training to get his board-certification in Critical Care Medicine. I’m thrilled that he is now at my home institution (UCSF) doing this fellowship, where I couldn’t resist recruiting him to join our all-star cast of blog authors. Today is the first of hopefully a long series of critical care/resuscitation topics that are practically relevant for all practicing emergency physicians.
Injuries to the hand are fraught with multiple, concurrent injuries. Many injuries may have chronic debilitating complications, if not detected early. One such example is a finger laceration with a concurrent extensor tendon injury, causing delayed boutonniere deformity formation and limited function. Review the anatomy of the extensor tendon. View the video on how to perform the Elson’s test to detect a central slip tendon injury.