Preventing Nightmares: A Guide for Medical Students and Residents
Nobody likes waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air. When you make a mistake in the emergency department, that’s exactly what happens. Nightmares.
MEdIC Series | The Case of the Justified Junior
“With great power comes great responsibility…” – Stan Lee
‘Tis the season of transitions. This summer marks the annual promotion day for most medical professionals. We transition between junior to senior, from clerk to resident, from resident to new attending. And with this comes increased responsibilities, including teaching.
This month, we ask you to come and help us think through a difficult situation that might occur between various levels of learners and supervisors.
Welcome new ALiEM-EMRA fellow Scott Kobner
We are excited to announce our inaugural 2014-15 ALiEM-EMRA Fellow for Social Media and Digital Scholarship, Scott Kobner, who is a second-year medical student at New York University School of Medicine. Scott brings a unique perspective to ALiEM and the FOAM community. He has worn many hats in the past, which will serve him well towards being a more versatile and mature clinician. He has been an EMT and EMT trainer, a scribe, a child-life volunteer, and New York Free Clinic patient educator. His focus recently has been on improving patient education especially in the Emergency Department.
Welcome new ALiEM-CORD Fellow Dr. Sameed Shaikh
It is with great pleasure that announce our inaugural 2014-15 ALiEM-CORD Fellow for Social Media and Digital Scholarship, Dr. Sameed Shaikh, from Sinai-Grace Emergency Medicine Residency Program/Detroit Medical Center. As a PGY-2, he already has an impressive multimedia skill set, including website design, video editing, photography, and electronic music composition. He is currently using his skills for good rather than evil at his residency program to match medical education and medicine in general with currently available technological solutions.
MEdIC Series: The Case of the Exasperated Educator – Expert Review and Curated Commentary
The Case of the Exasperated Educator presented an attending at the end of a difficult shift with a learner that just didn’t seem to “get it.” As the new attending coming on shift, how can we help our colleague and his student? How can we avoid getting ourselves into a similar situation? No matter patient we are, odds are that we will all find ourselves in these roles at some point or another. Check out the ALiEM community’s discussion of the case.
Research Figures Demystified: Bland-Altman Plot
While working your shift in a small community ED, you overhear that EMS is on their way to you with a five-year-old child in respiratory distress after eating a peanut butter sandwich. Anticipating the patient to be in anaphylactic shock, you and the senior resident begin planning the course of action. The resident asks, “how much do you think a five-year-old weighs?” While you begin fumbling for your Broselow tape, a nurse seated near you confidently responds, “That’s easy, just count your fingers! One, three, five. Ten, fifteen, twenty! The child weighs approximately twenty kilograms!”.
Simulation Trick of the Trade: Bleeding Cricothyroidotomy Model
One advantage of simulation as an educational tool is the re-creation of cognitive and emotional stresses in caring for patients. Doing this for a high fidelity scenario is relatively easy – add additional patients, make a them loud, combative, or otherwise cantankerous, and add interruptions for good measure. However, when training for procedures in the simulation lab, we practice the procedure in isolation on a “task trainer” without cognitive and emotional stress for context. An off-the-shelf task trainer can do a superb job of teaching the mechanics of performing a procedure, but they lack complexity necessary to train for performing the procedure under stress. (more…)