A high-stakes component in a medical student’s application for an emergency medicine (EM) residency is the Standard Letter of Evaluation, or SLOE. This is a standardized templated letter, written by an group (e.g. department) or faculty from an EM-residency program. This episode of EM Match Advice gives a behind-the-scenes peek into what letter writers are thinking and a deeper dive into the mechanics of the SLOE.
(more…)
Did you get your flu shot? We hope so. Influenza season is upon us again and it is always helpful to review the latest 2018 Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) update on the diagnosis and treatment of influenza.1 Notable is that influenza-confirmed patients who present within 2 days of symptoms who are deemed low risk do not automatically warrant antiviral treatment. The subsequent question then is who is high risk? The following infographic by our Guidelines Editor, Dr. Kelly Wong, summarizes the key take-home points for emergency medicine clinicians.
(more…)
With 1000+ posts over 10 years, we are thrilled to add 1 superstar to the ALiEM blog team. We officially announce Dr. Luz Silverio as our new Deputy Editor in Chief to help shape the direction and educational content of the blog. She graduated from the UCSF-SFGH Emergency Medicine Residency program, is an emergency physician at Kaiser Permanente at Santa Clara and a clinical assistant professor (affiliate) at Stanford University, hosts her own infrequently edited blog, Silverio Lining, has been a guest podcaster for EM:RAP and ERCast, serves as an Orthopedics Editor for DynaMed, and has had her watercolor artwork featured at the 2019 Essentials of Emergency Medicine. Don’t miss her talks at ACEP this year; some images from her talks are excerpted below. We are incredibly excited to follow Luz Silverio’s lead.
Applying for residency programs has often been compared to the modern world of dating. So in this 26th installment of the EM Match Advice series, we discuss finding the right-fit program for applicants using modern dating terminology. Join us in this fun and informative episode in navigating the residency match process.
(more…)
The National Residency Matching Program® (NRMP) annually publishes data for the Residency Match. In this EM Match Advice episode, program directors reflect on the 2019 data for EM [PDF]. How competitive was emergency medicine (EM), especially given the transition period of having a single-accreditation system? Because it seems that EM remains modestly competitive, how many programs should one apply to and interview at? The below table outlines the data trends for 2011-2019.
(more…)
One of the gold standard for building and sustaining collaborative, multi-institutional research networks in medicine is the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) organization. Their efforts on studying pediatric emergency care has resulted some of our specialty’s landmark papers in Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, and Annals of Emergency Medicine. Although we are not officially affiliated with them, we fully support their efforts and wanted to help disseminate their evidence-based findings with an educations. Thus was born the PECARN Publication Prospectus (P3) app project [download free P3 app].
As with many of our ALiEM initiatives, the P3 project arose from a collaborative sprint effort over a 4 week period in 2019 with prehospital educators, emergency medicine (EM) residents, budding and current pediatric EM fellows, and EM/PEM attending physicians. This app plans to be a “living” catalog of PECARN publications which is updated as their prolific research team continues to publish.
The P3 app, which is compatible with iOS and Android devices, summarizes each of the 140+ PECARN publications. These papers are subcategorized into learner groups (physicians/advanced practice providers, pharmacists, triage nurses, prehospital providers, and administrators) as well as organ system groups.
We are always looking for more volunteers (physicians, pharmacists, nurses, paramedics) who support this exciting initiative. Contact us at [email protected]. Specifically, we need assistance with:
Our ALiEMU learning management system, which currently houses the AIR series, Capsules series, and In-Training Exam Prep courses, is ready to slowly open the doors to welcome external authors with high quality content. We are thrilled to welcome a UCSF-sponsored pediatric emergency medicine (EM) point of care ultrasonography (POCUS) series, led by Dr. Margaret Lin. The first course is on the intussusception scan, filled with multiple ultrasound scans showing normal variants and two different types of intussusception.
(more…)