Injecting into the Carpal Tunnel

In Medical Concepts by Brent Thoma5 Comments

It’s been awesome working in the ED with the benefit of the knowledge gained on off-service rotations in specialties like Plastic and Orthopedic Surgery. Great learning experiences on these rotations have led to a run of success with injections into all sorts of places and have given me a desire to inject into… well… most things that there is evidence for treating with needles. Recently I’ve treated a carpal tunnel syndrome (median nerve …

The Reference Letter Triple Crown

In CaRMS Guide, Mentorship by Brent Thoma12 Comments

Interviews for the Canadian Residency Matching Service (CaRMS) are over and they were as difficult as ever. One thing nobody appreciates on the medical student side of the CaRMS equation is how difficult it is for the programs to come up with our rank list. The applicants this year were spectacular and ranking them was more difficult than splitting hairs. Fortunately, the depth of the applicants makes us confident that we will be …

A Review of Systematic Reviews

In Knowledge Translation by Brent Thoma9 Comments

Dr. Wikipedia said that:“An understanding of systematic reviews and how to implement them in practice is becoming mandatory for all professionals involved in the delivery of health care.” And to me, the word of Wikipedia is the next best thing to the word of Weingart. As usual, I think Dr. Wikipedia is correct. Systematic reviews are where a lot of the evidence-based medicine that we aspire to practice is consolidated, and we require …

Arguments for a Journal of FOAM

In Knowledge Translation by Brent Thoma19 Comments

Over the past couple of weeks myself and others (Michelle Lin, Todd Raine, Lauren Westafer, Minh Le Cong, Javier Benítez , Simon Carley, Nadim Lalani, etc!) have tweeted, mused and, in the case of Michelle Lin, even experimented with the idea of peer-review for FOAM. My thoughts are summarized in blog posts here and here. Those posts, along with Todd Raine’s Storified version of the twitter conversation and Michelle Lin’s post on her experiment …

Flipside: A Dissenting Opinion on Crystalloid Fluids

In Medical Concepts by Brent Thoma1 Comment

As mentioned in my previous posts on Peer-review in FOAM (here and here), following my post on Ringer’s Lactate and Normal Saline I received feedback via e-mail in an e-mail from Dr. Rory Spiegel, an EM resident from Newark, NJ. He offered a well thought out dissenting opinion on Crystalloid Fluids that I felt deserved a post of its own to counterbalance my previous one (Greetings/goodbyes removed for length). On the topic of …

FOAM: A Market of Ideas

In Knowledge Translation by Brent Thoma7 Comments

Following my post on the FOAM peer review process (Crowdsourced Instantaneous Feedback) there were some excellent comments made on my blog and twitter that led me to consider FOAM peer-review in the context of a market of ideas. Thanks especially to Nadim Lalani (ERMentor), Simon Carley (St. Emlyns) and Elisha T (The Chart Review) who commented on my post and inspired this entry. In particular, Simon Carley noted criticisms of the current peer …