A 62 year old woman presents to your Emergency Department with a chief complaint of severe right eye pain. Upon further questioning, she reveals reduced vision in the affected eye and colored halos around lights. She reports a diffuse headache and two episodes of vomiting. A quick physical exam reveals significant conjunctival injection and a fixed, mid-dilated pupil. Does your differential contain acute angle closure glaucoma? What is Acute Angle Closure Glaucoma? Acute angle …
National Rounds | Diagnostic Reasoning: Should we trust our gut?
5On May 24th, 2016, Dr. Jonathan Sherbino (@sherbino) of McMaster University was invited to speak at Grand Rounds at the University of Saskatchewan on the topic of diagnostic reasoning. His presentation explained how physicians think of a diagnosis and how we can teach learners cognitive strategies to improve their diagnostic reasoning. This blog post has taken that wisdom and (hopefully) captured it in blog post form as the first blog edition of CanadiEM National Rounds. Misdiagnosis… The Boogieman …
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 …
Edutainment: It’s Called a Lecture Theatre for a Reason
“Are your simulations that good?” my wife joked as we stepped out of Star Tours (a pretty fantastic space flight simulator at EuroDisney). I pause… “They’re a close second of course. Well, maybe a distant second, close third? It’s different, right?” As the day went on, more questions kept popping up in my mind. Just how good are our simulation sessions? Star Tours was hugely entertaining (hard not to like flying a spaceship) …
AnkiEM Evolution – Flashcard Exchange & Flashcards Deluxe
For the background on this project check out my post The AnkiEM Project. Basically, when I started making cards to review for my board exams I knew that I wanted to use a spaced-repetition flashcard tool (thanks to Chris Nickson‘s from Life in the Fast Lane for exposing me to this concept) and Anki seemed like the best bet. However, as I collected feedback from Eve Purdy, Andrew Tagg, Joshua Power and Reuben Strayer I began to consider other alternatives. Specifically, I agreed with Joshua Power that it would …