It’s 3 am in the middle of your busy night shift and you begin your evaluation of a 65 year-old woman with diabetes with several hours of unilateral flashes of light in her left eye. Her visual fields seem normal, but you are unable to see her fundus with your direct ophthalmoscope. Luckily, you remembered the teaching from your ultrasound rotation during residency.
Handshaking has been practiced as far back as the 5th century BC and used today as a common way of greeting others. In the hospital setting this occurs multiple times throughout the day. Many alternatives to the handshake have been developed and utilized, but they have failed to replace the handshake as a form of greeting. Nosocomial infections have been identified as a major preventable complication of inpatient care and one of the most important initiatives to reduce this is hand hygiene. The authors of this study propose the fist bump as a safe and effective way to avoid hand-to-hand contact and therefore reduce transmission of infection. 1 (more…)
There is significant practice variability when providers are asked to determine if a patient is intoxicated. Some providers will evaluate a patient to determine if a patient is “clinically sober”, while other providers will rely on a patient’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to evaluate a patient’s level of intoxication. There is very little data to suggest that either approach is superior; however, both practice patterns have significant limitations and carry a certain degree of medicolegal risk.
Don’t know when to use ketofol for procedure sedation or if you can rapidly load phenytoin? See the new PV-Plus Cards on AgileMD for free on any smartphone/tablet/desktop. Other topics include:
UPDATE Jan 1, 2018: The PV Cards are no longer on AgileMD.
It seems like a simple enough question: How do you diagnose and treat uncomplicated UTIs in older adults? The answer is: It depends. Part 1 of this post will discuss diagnosis of UTIs in this population, and part 2 will address treatment.
A patient actively vomiting is wheeled into your ED. Within minutes IV access is obtained, and your nurse asks what tests and medicines are wanted. A liter of normal saline, ondansetron, and an H2 blocker are easy, but what labs to order? I think we can all agree on a metabolic profile to look at electrolytes and liver function tests, and a lipase level to assess for pancreatitis. But what about an amylase level?
Originally from Clinical Monster blog
After getting many requests for more PV cards, we are excited to launch 13 new topics located in the Cardiovascular folder of the Emergency Medicine: PV Cards collection on