Trick of the Trade: Heat it up!
What is it about heat that makes everything feel better? Fireplace, hot tub, heat packs, electric blankets, and hot chocolate have got to be the best inventions EVER.
How can we apply this in Medicine?
Finding the right journal for your manuscript
When writing a manuscript, how do you choose what journal to submit to? You should factor in the journal’s impact factor and your manuscript content.
At the recent CORD Academic Assembly meeting, I learned of a website which helps you decide your journal.
Trick of the Trade: Website resource on HIV medications
At our department’s first annual UCSF High Risk Hawaii Conference 2 weeks ago, Dr. Rachel Chin taught about complications from all of the HIV drugs on the market now. It’s a virtual alphabet soup: EFV, TDF, FTC, oh my. How do you keep track of them all?
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Paucis Verbis: Pneumonia risk stratification tools
Pneumonia is a common cause for ED visits. How do you decide on whether the patient can be managed as an outpatient or inpatient? To supplement your clinical judgment, many clinicians use the Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) score.
Have you heard of CURB-65, supported by the British Thoracic Society? What about SMART-COP, which is meant to help you predict if your patient will need Intensive Respiratory or Vasopressor Support (IRVS)?
PV Card: Risk Stratification Scoring Tools in Pneumonia
Go to the ALiEM Cards for more resources.
Article Review: Professionalism of physicians on Twitter
In a Research Letter in JAMA, Dr. Chretien et al describe the profile of physicians in the Twitter universe, specifically focusing on professionalism.
Inclusion criteria:
- Self identified physician
- At least 500 followers during May 1-31, 2010 (Whew, I only have 309 followers.)
- English tweets
- Posted a tweet within last 6 months
Paucis Verbis: Assessing patients with suicidality in the ED
Dr. Rob Orman emailed me last week about creating a pocket card on Suicide Risk Stratification. In many community ED’s, risk assessment is done by the emergency physician. I’m lucky where I work, because we have a 24/7 psychiatric ED, which consults on suicidal patients in the “medical ED”.
In the end, assessment is primarily based on physician judgment, because there’s no great clinical decision tool, rules, or scores to assess risk. Rob has created his own mnemonic to help you ask the right questions in assessing a suicidal patient. This is a sneak peek into a larger article that Rob is planning to unleash on the world on suicide assessment. Based on his review of the literature and own clinical experience, the mnemonic is: TRAAPPED SILO SAFE.
TRAAPPED SILO
- “Risk factors” which increase a patient’s risk for committing suicide in the near future.
SAFE
- “Protective factors”which decrease a patient’s risk for committing suicide in the near future.
PV Card: Risk Stratification of Suicide
Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.
Hot off the press: MediBabble app
Ever since my post about the top medical apps, I have been inundated with people asking me to review their apps. One has stood out.
Medibabble is a real-time medical translation app and is now available for FREE. It was created by two innovative UCSF medical school graduates, Dr. Alex Blau and Dr. Brad Cohn. This app contains an extensive preset list of history questions and physical exam commands. When you click on a sentence, the app will translate and speak the sentence in one of 5 languages (Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Haitian Creole).