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.
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.
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…)
Critical Thinking: Minimizing NOT knowing what you do not know
Socratic questioning, a dialectic approach to acquiring knowledge, has been around for ages. If done appropriately, it’s a rigorous method of learning. Questioning reveals our knowledge base, reasoning, and want for clarification; invites a dialogue; and establishes a relationship with others. Socratic questioning can also aid in the development of critical thinking.
Assessment in medical education: Finding the signal in the noise
This past December it was reported in the Harvard Crimson that the median grade at their prestigious University was an A-.1 A flood of articles followed bemoaning grade inflation at educational institutions with a former Harvard President noting cheekily that “the most unique honor you could graduate with was none”.2 This might be alright if well-developed criterion-based instruments are used to grade the students, but given the variability in courses taught at the University and difficulty of developing such tools, it is unlikely. That being the case, if the median is an A-, one wonders how sub-par performance must be to fail.
Getting Semmelweised: An Essay on Fear and Medical Innovation
The man who saved more lives than any other physician (in the history of humanity combined) died in a mental institution—unrecognized and shunned by the medical community. He was beaten by guards and died a miserable death. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician practicing in the mid-1800’s, years before Louis Pasteur came up with his germ theory and Joseph Lister popularized hand washing.