See One, Do One, TEACH ONE

This month’s post goes out to the new doctors in the department welcome!

Congratulations! You made it graduating from medical school and matching into one of the best emergency medicine residency programs in the country. Here are just a few tips to help you get started with good habits.

Attend conference

Not only is it required, but you need acceptable conference attendance, in order to graduate the residency program.

Sleep

Bottom line: Sleep allows you to perform, treat your co-workers, friends, family, and patients better. It also creates and keeps your memory up to par.

Create a reasonable study schedule

Gone are the days of seemingly unlimited time to study. You will have to condense your study time in between 12 hour shifts, residency requirements, family, eating, and sleeping. It is important to create a schedule that fits this new lifestyle you are about to embark upon.

I know you have a smartphone, use it! There are lots of ways to manage your time. Here is a good resource to help you find your groove: http://99u.com/category/time-management. Very important to not let your work schedule dictate your life!

There are tons of material to choose from. I would suggest a formal text to flesh out topic details. Preference is the main factor in choosing a comprehensive textbook.

• Tintinalli
• Rosens

Review books offer the quick and dirty information on a topic. They are bullet point style and are great to read up on topic that you saw during your shift.

• Just the facts are great when accompanied with the conference modules. Pulmonology is up first!
• Carol Rivers if you are looking for a little more than bullet points

Make a habit of reading about something that you saw during your shift when you get home.

This doesn’t have to be an entire chapter but chose something specific; ie., procedures, treatment, pathophysiology, exam findings, ECG etc…

eMedicine chapters are great for this because they outline a disease process in just this manner! It’s peer reviewed and you just might discover that one of your Attendings or co-residents authored the article.

Bottom line if you are falling asleep with the book in bed you have read too much. Manageable blocks should be pre-planned either to your preference or with the wednesday conference schedule.

In our shop Dr. Silverberg has a great ECG site, Dr. Martindale has an ECG book there are many more resources online on this topic Dr. Smith’s ECG Blog, Dr. Amal Mattu has a video site updated weekly as well as ECG books.

Board review and in-service exam materials are listed below. If you historically do poorly at standardized exams start practicing early, like today. One method I have employed is splitting up the questions to finish them by in-service time. This way I am doing 5-10 questions a day.

• 1000 Questions
• 1200 Questions
• PEER VII
• PEER VIII
• EM:RAP features board review questions online
• HIPPOEM a new resource
• Greenberg’s Atlas of Emergency Medicine offers visual diagnoses

For procedures I like Roberts and Hedges hands down! Whenever I do a certain procedure during a shift I like to go home and read about again. Videos can be found for some procedures on Youtube and eMedicine. Did you see a dislocated shoulder during your shift? Take a look at shoulderdislocation.net.

And that’s just a start! There are many resources available to use your study time effectively with your new life as an emergency medicine physician. Plan your time to learn and grow.

Anymore words of wisdom from our more seasoned residents or Attendings?

Hit me on twitter @melton_em.

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melton

Latest posts by melton (see all)

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