Yesterday CJEM tweeted out one of their latest article to become open-access: Review of the CATCH study: a clinical decision rule for the use of computed tomography in children with minor head injury. While I understand that they are not able to make all of their articles open-access due to financial considerations, they have made the effort to make those articles published >1 year ago freely available. This article provides an overview and …
Simulation for Dentists: A Case of Syncope
This week I was asked to run a simulation session for senior dental students that focused on emergencies a dentist might have to run in their office. A simulation for dentists!? I had never worked with dental students before. After some discussion and a brief literature review I found a case that fit the bill. This post was meant to summarize take-away points for the students that participated that day and was not …
My Approach to Clearing C-Spines
I gave a talk the other day on clearing C-Spines, with Prezi linked here. As a disclaimer, this is my approach based on my clinical experience and from reading the literature – you should discuss this amongst your colleagues and review the literature to see if you reach the same conclusions. I would appreciate some comments – peer review if you will. Objectives of the Talk: Apply the Canadian C-Spine Rule and NEXUS criteria …
Tiny Tips: PERC Rule
The “Tiny Tips” series aims to provide helpful memory aids for remembering difficult to recall exam material for emergency medicine. You can get all of them compiled in an easy-to-review way by downloading the Tiny Tips deck of Boring Cards. This post outlines a mnemonic to help remember the PERC rule (Pulmonary Embolism Rule-out Criteria). PERC is a useful clinical decision rule to help rule-out pulmonary embolism in patients a clinician’s gestalt suggests …
Not Dumber, but Different? Counterpoint from a Millennial
This evening I read the article Dumber Doctors on the blog Glass Hospital and just had to respond. John Schumann concludes his article stating: One concern that has a ring of truth to it is that young doctors have become great “looker-uppers,” and have lost the sense of what it’s like to actually read and study medicine. While doctors enter the profession with a commitment to lifelong learning, some of us fear that …
The Social Media Index (SM-Index): A Pilot Project
As promised last week, I have put together a pilot Social Media Index (SM-Index) for free open-access medical education (FOAM) websites. There were 25 sites included within this analysis. They were selected from the sites that I frequent as well as anyone that volunteered their site when I asked on twitter. This article discusses the thinking behind the creation of the SM-Index and the methods used to calculate it. The index itself is …