Tactical Medicine News Blog

The EM Cases podcast taken to the next level . . . . In person, In Toronto Sarah Reid - Pediatrics Module George Kovacs - Airway Module Walter Himmel - Anticoagulants Module Arun Sayal - Orthopedics Module Don Melady - Geriatrics Module Rick Penciner - Moderator Teresa Chan - Moderator David Carr - Live Podcast [...] The post EM Cases Course Speakers Confirmed appeared first on Emergency Medicine Cases.

Heat-related illnesses comprise a continuum of disorders ranging from the minor heat edema, heat rash, heat cramps, and heat exhaustion to the more life-threatening condition known as heat stroke. As a general rule, it is involves a process whereby heat gain overwhelms the body’s mechanisms of heat loss. Often it is caused by an impairment of the body’s cooling and adaptive mechanism to effectively transfer heat to the environment, thus leading to a rise in core temperature. 1

Background: In cardiac arrest, high quality, uninterrupted CPR is essential to help improve survival rates. In theory, mechanical CPR should provide CPR at a standard depth and rate for prolonged periods without a decline in quality, which should help improve survival and survival with good neurologic outcomes. There are many types of mechanical chest compression devices but the two main technologies can be generalized as piston devices and load-distributing bands. The piston driven devices work by compressing on the chest in an up and down type of motion, similar to how we do manual CPR. The load distributing bands wrap all the way around the chest and shorten and lengthen which provides more of a rhythmic type of chest compression. No individual trials have ever shown superiority on clinically important outcomes for adult patients with OHCA, regardless of device.

If you are a 4th year medical student, chances are that interviews are taking up much of your time and thought right now. Interviews can be stressful, especially when your future job is at stake and in the hands of the somewhat mysterious match process. How can you set yourself apart from hundreds of other applicants as someone who is a good fit for a program, who should be ranked highly, and who will be a great future resident – all in the course of a 15 minute interview? This post will walk you through some important “Dos” to make you stand out, and some devastating “Don’ts” that can sink you down lower on a program’s rank list.

The emergency department (ED) manages acute pain on a daily basis, ranging from non-traumatic back pain to traumatic fractures. Some providers jump immediately to opioids without considering other non-opioid alternatives or start at incorrect doses. In the age of the opioid epidemic (ALiEM-Annals of EM journal club; bookclub discussing Dreamland) and medication errors, choosing the initial right agent(s) and dose(s) are important. Dr. Nick Koch and Dr. Sergey Motov (@PainFreeED) from Maimonides Medical Center present a thoughtful, evidence-based PV reference card on selecting and dosing initial pain medications for ED patients. Also congratulations to Dr. Motov and his team for their recent 2015 Annals of EM publication1 on subdissociative dose ketamine for analgesia.