Author: Dr. Dave Hill
Thinking about a recent M&M case and the roles that bias plays in how patient care is delivered, I don’t think I could say it better than the Drs. at EM Ottawa (emottawablog.com).
“Clinical decision making is an extremely complex process, and healthcare professionals often develop adaptive mechanisms [heuristics or biases] as we are faced with repeated similar experiences in a busy clinical environment.”
…
Author: Dr. Nupur Shah
Article: Comparison of Two Glycemic Discharge Goals in ED Pts with Hyperglycemia, a randomized trial.
…
Author: Dr. Shayna Adams Background: The paper validates a prediction rule that aims to identify kiddos with intra-abdominal injuries after blunt trauma. The prediction rule was derived from a previous study that looked at about a thousand children and found six factors to be related to intra-abdominal injury. In order to trigger the prediction rule, the kiddo…
Author: Dr. Trevor Landas Defined as inflammation of the meninges, or covering layers of the central nervous system, meningitis has a high morbidity and mortality if not identified and treated promptly. The incidence is approximately 1.38 per 100,000 people. Clinical Presentation: Presenting symptoms include the classic triad of fever, neck stiffness, and altered mental status,…
Author: Dr. Catherine Buckley
Alright. LVADs. First thing is first- use a lifeline and phone a friend. Call the patient’s VAD coordinator. Patient may have a card that they are able to give you… but if the patient is otherwise incapacitated, look for a tag on their controller.
…
Author: Dr. Calloway Pichette Article: IV Fluids for the treatment of Emergency Department patients with migraine headache: a randomized controlled trial Background: Headache, a common complaint in the ED. Many times a day we see patients with migraine headaches in the ED. Give them a migraine cocktail (sadly, no martinis involved…) and then viola! They…
Basics First off…what is sickle cell anemia? Who gets it? What does the spleen even do?? Calm down, we’ll get to all of that. Let’s start with. The. Basics. So… sickle cell anemia is an autosomal recessive disease that results in a mutation in the Beta chain of hemoglobin, resulting in an amino acid change…
…
Author: Catherine Buckley MD There are about 8 – 10 million ED visits with the chief complaint of chest pain per year in the US. (Owens et al.)10 billion dollars are spent on chest pain, 10% of which goes to the work up for ACS diagnosis. Yet somehow despite these millions we still miss 1-2%…