Work in Progress: Visual Aid Project
Practicing at an academic ED, such as in San Francisco General, I find that I am constantly surrounded by medical students, interns, and residents. Most are working on shift with me, but occasionally I have medical students shadowing me to learn more about the Emergency Medicine specialty. Have you ever had a person shadow you (excluding your annoying little brother when you were a kid)? It’s actually a little stressful for me, because I want the shift to be a positive learning experience for them. Inevitably, it doesn’t take long before I get immersed in mundane troubleshooting activities (eg. calling [+]
Article review: Standardizing the EM clerkship patient encounter experience
As a medical student, do you remember your EM clerkship experience and whether you saw a wide variety of patient chief complaints? Did your fellow medical student on the EM clerkship rotation, who was going into Orthopedics, seem to only see patients with orthopedic complaints? [+]
Hot off the press: Two journals join Medline
If a journal gets accepted it into the Medline database, it is viewed with significantly more legitimacy. It follows then that your academic CV is better regarded if your publications appear in journals which are listed on Medline. Plus, it’s just fun to see your name listed in Pubmed when you search yourself! Hmm, that sounded more egotistical than I intended, especially since I don’t have that many publications on Medline… [+]
Sneak Peek “Trick of the Trade: IO line for failed IV access
Nothing frustrates me more than not being able to obtain intravenous access in hemodynamically unstable patients, especially because I give a talk on “Troubleshooting the Difficult Vascular Access Patient.” What would you do in this trauma case? [+]
Faculty spotlight: Dr. David Wald
David A. Wald, DOAssociate Professor of Emergency MedicineDirector of Undergraduate Medical EducationAssociate Course Director – Doctoring CourseTemple University School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA) EM residency training: Albert Einstein [+]
Director of Growth, Strategic Alliance Initiative, [+]
Trick of the Trade for Intubation: Two hands are better than one
Recently on my ED shifts, there were several especially challenging endotracheal intubation scenarios. A patient with thick frothy sputum constantly oozing out her trachea such that we couldn’t see the vocal cords– no matter how much suction we used. Imagine the Diet Coke and Mentos backyard experiment. I’m not kidding. A 300+ pound agitated trauma patient with almost no neck, who eventually was found to have an epidural and subdural hemorrhage. A COPD patient who was increasingly lethargic, hypoxic, and hypercarbic (pCO2>115), who I knew would start desaturating quickly as soon as rapid-sequence induction drugs were given. [+]
Faculty spotlight: Dr. John Brown
Dr. John Brown is the well-known (infamous?) Medical Director of the San Francisco EMS Agency — not a small task or for the weak of heart. He also practices at SF General Hospital and manages to keep level-headed in the midst of chaos. I’m constantly impressed by his clinical and political saaviness. You would never know how big of name he is when you meet him. Totally humble and understated, especially given all that he’s done for the city and our specialty. [+]
Cool web tip: Getting a "reader" – bringing web content to you
Do you feel like you are routinely checking various websites to follow up on recent journal publications, reading blogs, catching up on the news? What’s new in Annals of EM or Academic EM? What’s on today’s CNN or EducationPR blogs? I’m a firm believer that technology should make things streamlined and easier, rather than creating more steps and hassles. I recently discovered online RSS readers on the web. If you don’t have one, you should get one. [+]
Tricks of the Trade: Let there be light!
In various ACEP News Tricks of the Trade columns, I have mentioned the importance of adequate lighting to visualize subtle injuries or pathologies. Traditional room overhead lighting is insufficient, especially if you are looking for that needle-in-a-haystack laceration in thick scalp hair or a tiny foreign body in a wound. If you are using a traditional Tungsten penlight, you need to invest in a LED light source. LED penlights are very small (can fit on a keychain), super-bright, long-lasting, and costs only $3-30. [+]
Faculty spotlight: Dr. Ghazala Sharieff
It’s not every day that you get to meet and hang out with a fun, funny, humble, spirited, and super-smart person. I first got to know Dr. Ghazala Sharieff on the lecture circuit. She’s one of the major go-to speakers for anything related to pediatric EM. When I’m stuck in a dilemma about a pediatric patient, I think – WWGD? What would Ghazala do? [+]