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Compassionate Care to Improve Patient Outcomes and Your Career from EMU 2024
As a profession, we suck at compassion as it is trained out of us through medical school and beyond. Compassion in not simply innate; like any behaviour, it can be learned through deliberate practice. There is evidence that compassion may improve morbidity and/or mortality in patients after trauma, cardiac events, cancer, diabetes, back pain, migraine headache and other conditions, prevent physician burnout and reduces rates of medical error, reduce the rates of patient complaints and litigation, and improve physician efficiency and resource utilization by reducing non-essential test ordering. A cultural shift emphasizing the importance of compassion in patient care needs to occur to improve outcomes of our patients and our job satisfaction; as such, compassion should be part of our training and CME...
EM Cases Summit ’24 Registration Now Open!
Registration is now open for the 2024 International EM Cases Summit November 21-23. Registration includes 3 days of talks, panel discussions, interactive discussions, procedural demos, an ebook and access to all the talks for 3 months after the conference. We also offer small group virtual simulation sessions, symposiums on EM Flow, Rural EM and Global EM plus a pre-conference HEARTS ECG course!
Journal Club 6 Which Older Patients Can Safely Forgo CT Head After a Fall? The Falls Decision Rule
The decision of whether or not to order a CT head for an older patient who falls is one I need to make on almost every shift. The Canadian CT Head Rule does not apply to older patients. Does the recently derived Falls Decision Rule give us an answer to the question of which older patients can safely forego a CT head after a fall? Dr. Rohit Mohindra reviews the latest evidence in this EM Cases Journal Club...
Ep 196 Pediatric Meningitis Recognition, Workup and Management
In this episode: recognition, risk stratification, decision tools, indications for lumbar puncture in the febrile pediatric patient, tips and trick on performing LPs in children, and ED management of pediatric meningitis. We answer such questions as: what are the test characteristics of the various clinical features of meningitis across various ages? How does one differentiate between meningitis and retropharyngeal abscess on physical exam? How do the Canadian and American guidelines on work up of well-appearing febrile infants compare when to it comes to indications for lumbar puncture? Which patients with suspected meningitis require imaging prior to lumbar puncture? How do we best interpret the various CSF tests to help distinguish between viral and bacterial meningitis? What are the indications and timing of administering dexamethasone in the pediatric patient with suspected meningitis? and many more.... EM Cases is Free Open Access; please consider a donation to help ensure that EM Cases remains Free Open Access on our donation page https://emergencymedicinecases.com/donation/
EM Quick Hits 57 – HIV Diagnosis, Failed Paradigm of STEMI Criteria, Poisoned Patient Airway Management, Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis, DIY Investments
In this month's EM Quick Hits podcast: Megan Landes on the importance of diagnosing HIV in the ED, Jesse McLaren on the failed paradigm of STEMI criteria and ECG tips to identify acute coronary occlusion, Anand Swaminathan on evidence for non-invasive airway management in the poisoned patient, Brit Long and Hans Rosenberg on the identification, workup and management of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, Matt Poyner on the most lucrative side-gig, DIY investing. To support EM Cases, please consider a donation here: https://emergencymedicinecases.com/donation/
ECG Cases 50 – STEMI: A Failed Paradigm, Enter Occlusion MI
Dr. Jesse McLaren illustrates the paradigm shift from STEMI to Occlusion MI (OMI) through 9 cases, and drives home the points that if there is STEMI criteria, consider false positives (eg. secondary and proportional to LVH or BER); if there is no STEMI criteria, consider false negatives and look for other signs of occlusion (eg. acute Q waves or loss of R waves, hyperacute T waves, or reciprocal STD/TWI) and if the ECG is nondiagnostic, consider other OMI signs including clinical (refractory ischemia, hemodynamic/electrical instability) and POCUS (new regional wall motion abnormalities).
