I am Dr. Taku Taira, Associate Program Director: How I Stay Healthy in EM
Dr. Taku Taira is an emergency physician working out of LAC and USC. Despite having multiple commitments, Dr. Taira definitely tries to stay well, by finding ways to combine wellness into his daily routine. Staying active and continuing to push his boundaries are ways he maintains wellness and enhances his personal growth. Here’s how he stays healthy in EM! [+]
Top 8 Must-Know EM Pharmacotherapy Articles of 2016
For the third consecutive year, we provide a quick summary of some important Emergency Medicine pharmacotherapy articles from the last 12 months. We have tried to focus on articles you may have missed, but are potentially high-impact for improving clinical practice in the ED. Without further ado, we present the 8 must-know EM pharmacotherapy articles of 2016. [+]
New Year’s Resolution | Post-It Pearls – Back to basics with bedside teaching
Happy new year! With so many exciting new blogs and podcasts out there producing wonderful clinical and professional development content, it strikes me that we may be overlooking the critical value that our star bedside clinician-educators provide for medical students and residents. Inspired by the #WhiteboardTeaching photos which Dr. Amal Mattu tweets from his ED shifts, I too started tweeting my own Post-It Pearls (#PostitPearls). In doing so, it has curiously reinvigorated my passion and dedication for bedside teaching. It has also allowed other learners and nurses to share in the teaching and learning. We are constantly on the lookout for something to [+]
The ALiEM Team: Meet some of our all-star cast
Happy new year! Over 80 people make the whole ALiEM organization run, often behind the scenes. In the spirit of creativity and building a cohesive team culture, we felt that an "About Us" page with standard professional headshots would be too traditional. So we made cartoon avatars of our top 30 organizational and project leaders. Take a peek at our all-star cast on our Meet the Team page.
Trick of the Trade: Warfarin tablet strength identification
Medical providers commonly encounter patients in the emergency department who state they are anticoagulated with warfarin, but they have no idea what dose they are taking. “I know that I take two pills of warfarin daily.” Dosing becomes critically important especially when continuing their medication as an inpatient, refilling their medications, or adjusting their outpatient dose because of an inappropriately high or low INR level. How can you determine the patient’s warfarin dose? [+]
Trick of the Trade: A cleaner way to apply dental cement for a tooth fracture
The management of a dental fracture is a core skill of the emergency physician.1 When the enamel is violated and the underlying dentin is exposed (i.e. Ellis Class II or greater), the dental pulp becomes at risk.2 Protecting the exposed dentin in a timely manner, therefore, is paramount. This is best accomplished through the use of dental cements. The application of dental cement to a fractured tooth, while a relatively rare procedure, is one often fraught with difficulties. With many of the formulations requiring the rapid application of a fast-drying cement, time for accurate and clean application is limited. This often clumsy, [+]
AIR-Pro: Toxicology (Part 2)
Welcome to the Toxicology (Part 2) AIR-Pro Module. Below we have listed our selection of the 12 highest quality blog posts related to 5 advanced level questions on toxicology topics posed, curated, and approved for residency training by the AIR-Pro Series Board. The blogs relate to the following questions: One-pill-could-kill ingestions for pediatrics patients Decontamination techniques Physostigmine Alcohol Withdrawal High dose insulin therapy In this module, we have 8 AIR-Pro’s and 4 Honorable Mentions. To strive for comprehensiveness, we selected from a broad spectrum of blogs identified through FOAMSearch.net and FOAMSearcher. [+]
Wellness and Resiliency During Residency: Work-Life Balancing Act
“The hardest thing for me was trying to find time to do things aside from being a resident. When you’re working six 12 hours shifts in a week, there’s only so much time left in the day to do anything else. Especially in the winter, you wake up, you get to work before the sun comes up, you work a 12 hour shift, you leave, and the sun’s gone. By the time you get home, you have enough time to wash the grime off, shovel a sandwich in your mouth, and pass out. And there was nothing else except for [+]
MEdIC Series: Case of the Fatiguing Fourth Year – Expert Review and Curated Community Commentary
The Case of the Fatiguing Fourth Year outlined a scenario many of us deal with at some point throughout our careers, that of a senior emergency resident struggling to cope with the physical, emotional and mental exhaustion of working in our chosen field of medicine. This month, the MEdIC team (Tamara McColl, Teresa Chan, Sarah Luckett-Gatopoulos, Eve Purdy, John Eicken, Alkarim Velji and Brent Thoma), hosted a discussion around this case with insights from the ALiEM community. We are proud to present to you the Curated Community Commentary and our 3 expert opinions. Thank-you to all participants for contributing to the very rich [+]
PV Card: Elbow Injuries
Elbow injuries are a common presentation to the Emergency Department. This pocket card reviews some the imaging, acute management, and some pearls for the following injuries: elbow dislocation, radial head subluxation, supracondylar fractures (such as the xray on the right), radial head fracture, epicondylitis, condyle fractures, and olecranon fracture. Thanks to Dr. Jonathon Hancock (Doctor's Hospital orthopedist) for the expert peer review. PV Card: Elbow Injuries View other PV Cards.