Tactical Medicine News Blog

The complications of alcohol use can be subtle in older adults, and the effects of alcohol are often incorrectly attributed to aging. Because of its under-recognition, the barriers to screening, and the many subtle ways in which it can present, some have suggested that alcohol misuse has replaced syphilis as the “great masquerader”. If you don’t think alcohol misuse is a problem among older adults in your ED, it may be because it has been hidden in plain sight.

In this digital age, it is somewhat assumed that you know how to manage all the digital information coming at you in the forms of email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds. Even if you only partake in email as your primary communication platform, information still can be quite overwhelming as a trainee or practicing medical provider. At a the annual Bay Area EM residency conference last week, Dr. Charlotte Wills (Highland), Dr. Rebecca Smith-Coggins (Stanford) and I were invited by Dr. Esther Chen (UCSF-SFGH) to share some our personal insights and advice on a panel. We quickly realized that this is indeed a hot topic which often gets subsumed under the larger umbrella of “Wellness”.

Simulations are routine now in medical training. But sometimes routine can start to get boring! All learners now know, especially for high fidelity simulations, to prepare for the unexpected. The stable patient will inevitably crash, maybe when your back is turned; the confederate in the room may or may not be a friend or a foe, you may never know! But these twists have become so integral to the simulation case that most learners know how to deal with it, or at the least know to anticipate it. But here is an idea for adding a new challenge to a stale simulation case. Blindfold the leader!

The Internet has not only facilitated connectivity between people, but it has also helped us to connect with educational material quite different from that of a physical textbook. We are consuming information at a much more rapid rate, and we are also becoming producers of content online. With the use of hyperlinks we are also connecting one content material with another, allowing for a more dynamic-instantaneous flow of knowledge as opposed to the static print in a physical textbook. People have started seeing the potential that this brings to education and are placing educational content online. These educational materials include lectures, videos, images, textbooks to name a few.

Inspired by the Harvard Business Review Cases and led by Dr. Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) and Dr. Brent Thoma (@BoringEM), the Medical Education In Cases (MEdIC) series puts difficult medical education cases under a microscope. On the fourth Friday of the month we will pose a challenging hypothetical dilemma, moderate a discussion on potential approaches, and recruit medical education experts to provide “Gold Standard” responses. Cases and responses will be made available for download in pdf format – feel free to use them! If you’re a medical educator with a pedagogical problem, we want to get you a MEdiC. Send us your most difficult dilemmas and help the rest of us to bring our teaching game to the next level.