A 40-year-old gentleman is brought into your Emergency Department by EMS in Pulseless Electrical Activity (PEA) arrest. With CPR in progress, monitors being placed, and epineprine being prepared, both nurses on either side of the patient report they couldn’t get IV access. A third nurse tries. Then a fourth. What should be done next? What is IO access, and when should it be used? Obtaining vascular access to deliver fluids, medications, and blood …
Renal Trauma in Professional Boxing: A Case Study of Adonis Johnson Creed
Presentation: In their first bout for the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, Adonis Creed, the reigning champion, and son of the late Apollo Creed, faces Viktor Drago. Ivan, the father of Viktor Drago, holds a notorious legacy as the man behind Apollo Creed’s fatal defeat in the ring years ago. Adonis, at the peak of his career, grapples with a whirlwind of emotions. He is not only seeking to avenge his father’s death but …
Common ED Presentations: Clerk Flashcards
Are you a medical student ready to excel in your first ever emergency medicine shift and impress your mentors in the ED? We introduce to you a set of flashcards with common differential diagnoses so you can confidently tackle common ED presentations! This post was reviewed by Daniel Ting and copy-edited by @aafia-maqsood
HiQuiPs: Test Result Follow-up in the Emergency Department
Introduction Test result follow-up can be especially challenging in the Emergency Department (ED) due to its multiplicity of moving parts. ED physicians are under increasing pressure when treating patients due to the challenges of high volumes of patients, pressure for quick discharges in the face of space constraints, and complexities surrounding patient handover. Test result follow-up is a process that is complex and has several steps, each with their own potential for error. …
HiQuiPs: Patient Safety Fundamentals – Patient Fall Prevention
An 85-year-old woman who lives independently at home was hospitalized three days ago for pneumonia. She has multiple comorbidities, including dementia, hypertension and diabetic neuropathy. While in hospital, the patient’s care team noticed her losing balance, and it was determined that the patient was at high risk of falling. One evening, the patient attempted to go to the bathroom independently. She put on her glasses and took the cane provided to her, as …
HiQuiPs: Patient Safety Fundamentals – Reducing Pressure Injuries
Hilary Weatherby is a Registered Nurse working as a Patient Safety & Quality Improvement (QI) Specialist. Hilary helps teams apply QI methodology to organization-wide projects and reviews patient safety events for the purposes of continuous quality improvement across a large, downtown Toronto, hospital system. You are a medical student seeing patients on a medicine unit at your local community hospital. One of your patients is an 81-year-old female with Parkinson’s disease who was …