The bombing of innocents at the Boston Marathon will forever be remembered alongside similar tragedies such as 9/11, not only for the resulting gruesome injuries and deaths that’s been engraved into our minds by the media, but for the sheer shock of witnessing something so unfathomable actually happening in reality. But as shocking as it was, the local healthcare response was surprisingly prompt, efficient, and effective. What we witnessed in the immediate aftermath …
Emotional Intelligence and How It Can Make You a Selfish Altruist
I am a fan of Twitter. I use it to “keep my finger on the femoral pulse of Emergency medicine“. Thanks to one of my Tweeps [twitter peeps] Dr Sam Ko [Twitter link] I came across this talk on Emotional Intelligence by author Chade-Meng Tan. You can see the talk yourself here. I have recently taken interest in mindfulness [check out additional resources at the end of this post]. I have also been trying …
A Pictorial Approach to Ultrasound in Shock
I just finished preparing an introductory talk on shock & ultrasound. Ultrasound in shock in 50 minutes! After having struggled considerably with the breadth of the topic, i struggled even more with the summary. How does one sum up such a huge topic? In the end, I decided to go with a picture (we all know the saying). Learning theories suggest that in order for a person to learn something new, that new …
New authors at BoringEM
BoringEM is excited to announce the addition of two new authors! Please help to welcome them by following them on twitter and distributing their first posts. Joel D’Eath is a Canadian paramedic that has previously been active in the world of FOAM through his twitter account @cmedik and website Post 88. He has committed to compiling the Canadian FOAM of the Week on an ongoing basis and writing some posts on Boring Pre-hospital …
The Agitated Patient in the ED: Moderate & Severe Agitation
In my first post of a trilogy on the agitated patient in the ED I outlined BARS sedation score for defining levels of agitation, discussed how to risk stratify a potentially agitated patient and offered some tips on how to deal with the mildly agitated patient. This post will discuss what to do with moderately and severely agitated patients while the final chapter will delve into the work-up of these challenging patients. If you’ve been …
A Commitment to Pre-publication Peer Review
Many keys have been tapped relating the merits and problems with various mechanisms of peer review for FOAM (Free Open-Access Meducation). It has been discussed on this site in multiple forms (Crowdsourced Instantaneous Review, FOAM: A Market of Ideas, Arguments for a Journal of FOAM, FOAM + Curriculum = FOAM-U?) by Aaron Sparshott at IVLine (Capturing the Great FOAM), by Damian Rolond at The Rolobot Rambles (Peer Review: Pointless, Perfunctionary or Practical) as well as on twitter (thanks …