A patient’s contact lens broke when she was trying to take it off. She feels the pieces are still inside her eye, but she was unable to fish them out. When you look through the slit lamp, you are unable to to see whether there are contact lens pieces inside since they are clear.
Often finding a pelvic examination bed for a female patient needing a speculum exam can be challenging. Without the elevated foot stirrups, the bed under the patient’s buttocks obstructs the pelvic speculum handle so that it can’t rotate completely into a 6 o’clock position.
For many of us in academia and medical education, we accomplish a tremendous amount of work outside of the workplace. This can be in our home office, on the public transit system, or in the library.
Interestingly, creative cognition occurs best with a moderate amount of ambient noise (not too much and not too little), according to a 2012 article from Journal of Consumer Research.
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Paitents can be a challenge when trying to obtain peripheral IV access. The vein may be collapsed from dehydration or scarred because of IV drug use or repeated cannulation. Before thinking about an ultrasound-guided deep vein IV or a central line, take a look at the external jugular (EJ) vein.
Central lines come packed with a long introducer needle (pink arrow) to feed the guidewire through AND a long angiocatheter (yellow arrow). Most people cannulate the vein by using the syringe and the introducer needle. What’s the angiocatheter for?
Emergency physicians are constantly challenged with fishing foreign bodies out of various orifices such as ears, as shown here in an earlier Trick of the Trade using a tissue adhesive.
What do you do when an overweight person presents with the cotton portion of a Q-tip lodged in his umbilicus? Skin retractors and direct probing were unsuccessful in removing the cotton.
Have you ever wondered why prescription eyedrops have different color bottle caps? Did you know that the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) has a policy to color-code topical ocular medication bottles caps?
“The Academy’s policy on color coding of eyedrop drug caps was prompted by reports to the Academy and the National Registry of Drug-Induced Ocular Side Effects of serious adverse events resulting from patient difficulty in distinguishing between various ocular medications. With input from the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Academy’s Committee on Drugs developed a uniform color-coding system.” — AAO policy statement
This totally makes sense. I would think the highest-risk population to mix up medications are those with vision problems. The colors help serve as an safeguard against error.