EM Principles

There’s nothing I can say to make this question less painful…          

It’s a dreary day in Brooklyn–cold and rainy with a cesspool of germs in the air–and Pod A sounds like a sweet symphony of hacking, moaning, and coughing. You pick up a patient with a chief complaint of ‘coughing up blood,’ and before you “don” you personal protective armor and face mask, you think about Read more…

You Know        You Want to Click Me       ‘Tis Saturday night and the adult ER is bustling with odors of aged urine and feet, zephyrs of fresh feces and half digested booze. A 33 year old man is placed in a dark corner; presumed intoxicated. As Read more…

It’s a beautiful fall day on your local college campus and the dudes and dudettes are out riding their longboards between classes. Suddenly– a pebble in the path, a wobble and screech of the board, and FOOSH!- down goes Mary Jane on her way to Sociology class.  She comes in to Read more…

It’s a busy Monday at Downstate when EMS rolls in a 66 year old woman from her dialysis center. They tell you she was towards the end of her HD session when she became less responsive and vomited. Now she won’t answer your questions or follow commands but keeps saying Read more…

A 53 year old man from Barbados comes into your Fast Track area with complaints of a foreign object in his eye. He worked for years in the tropical outdoors as a conservationists. You examine his eye, preparing to fake a funduscopic exam before you fluorecein his eye like crazy, only to Read more…

Let’s talk about the patient with HIV, who maybe presents with a fever, and says he doesn’t know his last CD4 count but thinks it’s ‘not good.’   Reach back into that fund of knowledge you’ve perhaps suppressed from your crazy, cramming, coffee-chugging days of Step 1 & 2, and tell me Read more…

  Chapter 1   You greet EMS at the door. They are bringing in a man who eerily reminds you of your drunken choreography at your own wedding. You ask some questions and appreciate a fully responsive man with violent, uncontrollable muscle contractions of the extremities, trunk and face – looks like Read more…

A 33 year old woman presents to your ED complaining of 4 days of “stomach pain.” She says it started after a weekend of mandatory celebratory drinking for closing a deal at her fancy finance job, and that she had been super stressed at work before the deal closed. She says Read more…

    Crocodile Dundee walks through your ED  door saying: “A ant eose ai aouh”. You look at him, bewildered, thinking: That isn’t an australian accent. You gather from Dundee that while attempting the mating stance of a Burmese Python, his jaw “just popped out”. You palpate his face and Read more…