The ABCDE approach applies to the initial assessment of critically ill patients. For each step, appropriate treatment should be started regardless if there is a definitive diagnosis. Airway1–3 Fatal in minutes. Think of this separately from breathing! Consider what would you do if the airway became threatened, e.g. Have you assessed for predictors of difficult airway management? Assessment Management ● Determine if patient can speak.● Inspect for secretions or foreign bodies.● Check for …
Preprints: What you need to know
View PostA Junior Learner’s Approach to Dealing with Difficult Situations during Patient Care
Why is this topic important? As a learner, you will inevitably experience “difficult” encounters during patient care. In fact, clerks and junior residents are more likely to label patient encounters as “difficult”.1 These encounters often involve patients that refuse to answer questions, use profanity, demand specific investigations or treatments, and express frustration with wait times. But why is it important for clerks and junior residents to learn how to handle difficult encounters with …
Requesting Consults in the Emergency Department
You are halfway through your very first Emergency Medicine shift. You have a 23 year old male patient who appears to be a slam dunk for acute appendicitis – he has symptoms that are consistent with the presentation, pain on palpation at McBurney’s point, a high white count, and CT findings of appendicitis. Your staff is being pulled in a thousand different directions, and asks you if you feel comfortable calling General Surgery …
Identification of Emergency Department Patients for Referral to Rapid-Access Addiction Services
This month, CanadiEM is featuring an article from the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine that looks at substance-related ED presentations and the need for direct referral to a rapid-access addiction services. Recent national data shows that substance-related emergency department visits are rapidly increasing.1 Despite this finding, previous studies show that many EDs do not have referral protocols for rapid-access addiction services.2 A prospective cohort study was conducted by Hann et al. to better characterize substance-related …
Using quality appraisal techniques to find trustworthy content in the FOAM universe
The COVID-19 Pandemic has highlighted the vast amount of information exchange that happens over the internet for healthcare providers. Learn to judge quality in Free Open Access Medical Education!