A review of bread and butter Emergency Medicine topics
The attending just stepped out to get coffee. You are the only resident in the critical care area. You just endorsed the only active patient to the medical admitting resident. As you are about to check your Instagram, the EMS rolls in a 34-year-old female s/p extramural delivery Read more…
You scan the board for your next patient in fast track when you see the chief complaint: hand laceration. Great! You grab your suture set and lidocaine (without epinephrine of course) and prepare for another quick “treat and street” and head to see the patient. Wrong. You realize there is a deep laceration to the palm side of the fingers and this may not be as simple as you once thought.
With the election circus coming to an end, you realize you need a little diversion to recover. What better way to do distract yourself than with a little hiking? You grab your gear, book a ticket to Tanzania, and the next thing you know you’re standing at the base of Read more…
It’s 4 AM. CCT is empty. You are doing uWorld questions for your upcoming Step 3. As you are about to drink your warm, cheap coffee, the triage nurse rolls in a 39-year-old female with no significant PMH who is complaining of shortness of breath. The patient notes worsening dyspnea Read more…
You are polishing off the sweet remains of a fruitful Halloween weekend when the paramedics burst through the door with a very sick looking patient. You throw away your candy wrappers and rush to the stretcher where they present you with a 58 year-old ill-appearing obese male who’s been in sub-acute rehab after a knee replacement. EMS tells you he had been found altered with episodes of vomiting, diarrhea, erratic behavior and movements.
You ask for the admission history and are handed over tomb of papers.
A-FIB, CHF, COPD, BIPOLAR, ETOH ABUSE, PEPTIC ULCER DISEASE, CAD w/ stents…
A medication list that spans the page…
As your mind is flooded with a large differential of CVA, sepsis, C-diff colitis, ETOH withdrawal-you begin to wish you could go back to eating twizzlers and kit-kats.
Your wise attending calmly walks over and reminds you can order one test that can pull together these disparate symptoms.
It’s Halloween! You just finished a rough shift (trying to figure out fake blood and real blood isn’t always as easy as it seems). You’re headed to a Halloween party in your go-to doctor scrub costume with a warm, pumpkin spice latte in hand. As you get closer to Read more…
It’s still 1993. You are finishing up your rotation at the Bogota General Hospital in Colombia. It’s your last day. EMS rolls in a 40-year-old female who was found lying down on the floor of her apartment. The patient’s husband had come in and then found his wife minimally responsive. Read more…
It is another long Saturday night in the emergency department and you are entrenched in the general chaos of discordant sounds, noxious smells, and inconceivable sights. You are notified by the nurse of a disheveled regular of your ED who has a history of alcohol abuse and pancreatitis and today Read more…
You just finished a slow Peds shift during which you saw a whopping 3 patients – viral syndrome, viral syndrome, ibuprofen, PO challenge, and discharge. You feel a little underwhelmed. As you leave the hospital, you decide to call an Uber. A disheveled guy with white hair comes to Read more…
It’s 1993. You are doing a month of elective in Bogotá General Hospital in Colombia. It’s your first week, and you are eating the empanada you got on the street. You turn on the TV: “A HUGE CAR BOMB KILLS 15 IN BOGOTÁ”. The blast has wrecked the fashionable Center Read more…