Can’t Miss Diagnoses Acute Coronary Syndrome Aortic Dissection Pericardial tamponade Pulmonary Embolism Pericarditis Pneumonia Tension pneumothorax Esophageal rupture Points to focus upon Hx: Risk factors for Coronary Artery Disease and Pulmonary Embolism Functional Status – Exercise Tolerance, Recent Decline? Use of Medications – Nitro Spray effective? Adherent to anticoagulant prescriptions? Habits to inquire about – Smoking, Recent or recurrent cocaine use Hemoptysis, Dyspnea (symptoms consistent with PE) Px: Always check for signs of …
CanadiEM Frontline Primer – Abdominal Pain
Can’t Miss Diagnoses Acute MI or ACS Aortic Dissection Appendicitis Bowel obstruction, Volvulus Cholangitis, Cholecystitis Ectopic pregnancy or Ovarian Torsion/ Ovarian cyst /TOA (FAST-US, Beta) Ischemic bowel GI Bleed, Pancreatitis Perforated viscus Ruptured AAA Testicular torsion Investigations CBC, BUN, Cr, Lytes, Glucose, VBG/Lactate Serial Troponin and Chest x-ray where warranted ECG – Remember to compare an old ECG Consider telemetry Tips on tests hs-troponin T – the 2h delta to rule-out is <4ng/L …
CanadiEM Frontline Primer – The Emergency Medicine Mindset
Overview The following are three key steps that you can take to start “thinking like an emergency physician”. Unlike other clinical services, the emergency department is often quite chaotic and requires a different mindset for organization of time and workflow. Check out this video made by the McMaster University Demystifying Medicine program alumni. Step 1: Stable vs. Unstable Look at your patient. The emergency medicine mindset is that you should be addressing your …
Introducing…the CanadiEM Frontline Primer
We’ve developed the CanadiEM Frontline Primer to help during this chaotic time. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many centres across the world have seen redeployment of physicians and other healthcare workers from their usual areas of work to acute care settings like the emergency department. For those of you who will be redeployed, we thank you for joining the Emergency Department (ED) team. To welcome you, we have been tirelessly working on a digital …