Syncope is common presenting complaint in the emergency department. Over 40% of adults will experience a syncopal episode, and syncope accounts for approximately 1% of all ED visits (1). Because syncope can result from a variety of etiologies, both life-threatening and benign, the syncopal patient is diagnostically challenging and can be especially daunting for learners. A consistent framework helps learners avoid missing a potentially serious underlying problem. The SVNCOPE mnemonic is a useful …
Boring Question | Are wound closure strips an acceptable alternative to tissue-adhesives?
Your next patient is a seven-year-old boy with a 3 cm linear laceration to his calf that he sustained sliding into second base during his little league baseball game. The patient was seen 3 months ago for a facial laceration that was repaired with sutures according to his mother. She reports he was very uncomfortable with the stitches last time, and would like to know “if there is some other way to do …
#CAEP15 Special Edition | An Interview with Featured CJEM Author Dr. Qamar Amin
Editor’s Note: Earlier this month at #CAEP15, we found out that one of the residents (Dr. Qamar Amin –@qam1n) at the University of Ottawa (who is the lead author of the CJEM featured paper this month) was going to be there. As we are very excited to see junior clinician researchers doing great work, so we reached out to the CJEM social media team to see if they could help us with a …
#CAEP15 Special Edition | Digital Scholarship Elective – An Educational Innovation by the BoringEM team
Editor’s note: This past week, whilst BoringEM.org was down, there was the ever eventful and fun #CAEP15 conference, which was held in beautiful Edmonton, AB. If you missed out, check out feeds by our editorial team (@TChanMD, @SLuckettG, @Brent_Thoma, @purdy_eve) for cool stuff that we saw. That said, one of the undisputed highlights of the conference was seeing one of our writers (Dr. Alia, Dharamsi, @alia_dh) present her novel Digital Scholars program during …
Boring Question | Do patients with liver disease need FFP before procedures?
I was recently asked to give fresh frozen plasma to a patient with liver disease and an elevated INR before a therapeutic thoracentesis. He was otherwise healthy and had no history of bleeding diathesis. While I was asking for consent and explaining the risks and benefits of blood product transfusion, I began to wonder about the true benefits in his case. Knowing that liver failure leads to both pro and anti-coagulant deficiencies, I wondered: Is an elevated …
Life Beyond Medicine | Humanities and Visual Arts
Do What You Love Obviously, med school is stressful. It’s especially stressful in third year, when students are starting to reflect on their extra-curricular involvements in the past two years for CaRMs applications and residency. For those who have managed to push out 5 publications, sit in student council, and still managed to go out on a Tuesday night and stumble into a physiology class at 830 on a Wed morning: kudos to them …