View Post

Tiny Tips: The COWS Scale

In Tiny Tips, TipsForEMExams by Isabelle GrayLeave a Comment

As the opiate crisis continues to escalate, emergency departments are seeing higher numbers of patients with complaints and complications related to opiate use disorder. There is strong evidence for opiate agonist treatment in preventing opiate related deaths. Additionally, Suboxone (buprenorphine-naloxone) is the recommended first line treatment.​1​ Suboxone Treatment For a full Suboxone start, a patient is required to be in moderate withdrawal, meaning a Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale (COWS) score of greater than …

View Post

Teaching EBM? You can sim that!

In Education & Quality Improvement, Infographics by Isabelle GrayLeave a Comment

If you’re in medicine, you’ve probably had to sit through at least one literature searching session. You were probably introduced to a long list of acronyms (most of which you’ve long forgotten) representing different literature databases. Perhaps you were asked to try out a search strategy in some of these databases, which you carefully assembled line by line. Did you ever wonder what the goal of these sessions were? Not sufficiently in depth …