It’s that time of year again. The references are in, the applications are complete, interviews have been accepted, flights are booked and medical students across Canada are preparing themselves for the rigamarole known as CaRMS that will determine where they will be living for the next 2-5 years and what kind of medicine they will be practicing for the rest of their lives. All you can do now is some CaRMS interview preparation.
Tiny Tips: SALTR for Pediatric Growth-plate Fractures
Up to one half of all children’s visits to the ED are orthopedic in nature [1]. Of these visits, approximately 35% are fractures that involve the growth plate, or physis, of a developing bone [2]. ED physicians must be familiar with the Salter-Harris classification system, which is the most commonly used system [3] for describing growth plate fractures. An easy mnemonic to remember the fracture type and description is SALTR: References Thornton …
Does that condition require investigation?
This post examines five commonly performed investigations (CT in minimal head injury, CXR in chest pain, investigations in Syncope/AFib/Renal Colic) in the Emergency Department (ED) to determine if the evidence exists to support current practice patterns.
Clinical Question: How useful is the β-HCG discriminatory zone in a suspected ectopic pregnancy?
For female patients presenting to the emergency department with a positive serum β-HCG as well as abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, syncope, or hypotension, the prudent emergency physician must rule out an ectopic pregnancy (EP). This potentially life-threatening entity is estimated to occur in 1.5 to 2% of all pregnancies and ruptured ectopic pregnancies account for 6% of all maternal deaths [cite num=”1″]. Point-of-care ultrasound (either trans-abdominal or trans-vaginal) has become the standard of …
Clinical Question: How effective is intra-articular lidocaine for shoulder reduction?
The use of intra-articular lidocaine for shoulder dislocation is a reasonable and evidence-based approach to facilitate shoulder reduction. This Clinical Question outlines the evidence to support its use and links to an excellent point-of-care video for outlining the procedure.
CaRMS Mentorship Series | Life after CaRMS
Editor’s note: Another version of this piece previously appeared on Luckett’s own blog (“This Liminal Space“). We asked her to revise and add to it so that it might become a permanent part of the BoringEM CaRMS advice section. It was initially published on BoringEM on April 15, 2015 and is republished on the ‘Throwback Thursday’ following the release of the CaRMS results yesterday – TC I remember submitting my CaRMS rank …