Editor’s note: This is a series based on work done by three physicians (Patrick Archambault, Tim Chaplin, and our BoringEM Managing editor Teresa Chan) for the Canadian National Review Course (NRC). You can read a description of this course here. The NRC brings EM residents from across the Canada together in their final year for a crash course on everything emergency medicine. Since we are a specialty with heavy allegiance to the tenets of Evidence-Based Medicine, we thought we would serially release the biggest, …
Patient Satisfaction: Who Really Matters?
Does patient satisfaction matter? If you’re a healthcare administrator you’re likely to believe so, as demonstrated by patient satisfaction surveys, hospital greeters and increased vigilance on ensuring enhanced patient satisfaction at all levels of healthcare. While well intentioned, the premise behind this sentiment may be misguided. There is an idea that enhanced patient satisfaction correlates to better patient care, however, we’re merely muting more deeply seeded issues. By employing measures to enhance patient …
How to Use Likelihood Ratios in Every Day Practice
A large part of an emergency physician’s job is finding and ruling out emergencies. To do that we ask the patient questions, examine them, look at their blood, and take radiographic images. The goal of all of these tests is to rule-in or rule-out disease. However, not all tests are created equal… As a student, I became frustrated when I was told that such-and-such test was “good” and I should use it. What did good …
How to survive (and like) your emergency medicine clerkship core rotation
Chances are that if you are reading this blog post you already have an interest in emergency medicine. In fact, you’ve probably spent countless hours learning about the field, perhaps by reading articles on this very blog. My hope is that this post will give you some tips and tricks to help you survive and thrive during those all-important core and elective emergency medicine clerkship rotations. On the off chance you’re thinking of …
FOAM Quality: #FOAMed Conundrum or Community Challenge?
On Monday, April 27, 2015 we hosted a blog post about the @FOAMstarter project by Rob Bryant. Today, I would like to continue the discussion around #FOAMed with a post about quality. For all the newbies out there, I think it’s important for us to catch you up to the discussions we are having online about FOAM quality, and conveniently, it’s what I’m going to be guest speaking about today! Today (April 30, 2015), …
FOAM Starter | How to choose who to follow when you are new to Twitter…
One of the more common questions I get asked by new Twitter users is WTF (Who To Follow?)! Twitter only really works if the user has a critical mass of people / organizations that they are following. There are now over 280 million monthly active Twitter users, and of these, over 1000 registered #FOAMed supporters. The dizzying array of people to follow can confuse, and overwhelm the new Twitter user. I like to …