Tactical Medicine News Blog

A health care worker hurried in to the ED after being poked with a needle. ‘It was an old 18G needle with dried blood’, she said. Her puncture had drawn blood. You discussed the very low risk of contacting HIV and the side effects of postexposure prophylaxis (PEP). She asked, ‘What does very low risk mean?’ Is there another way to covery risk for patients?

Many academic Emergency Departments are staffed by non-EM residents. Dr. Amer Aldeen and his super-star team from Northwestern created NURRC Modules (Northwestern University Rotating Resident Curriculum). These modules allow the off-service residents, who all have different schedules, to learn key EM-based topics at their own leisure and convenience. The positive effect of the curriculum on the off-service residents’ medical knowledge was recently published in Academic Emergency Medicine

It is 2 a.m. You, the resident, have just spoken to your staff/attending, who told you to do a task. You have seen one, but don’t feel comfortable doing one independently. Will you tell your staff/attending about how you feel?  What if the patient did poorly after that? This study examines the perception of EM trainees of their competence and adverse events and how they feel about reporting them.

  Medgadget annually hosts a contest for the best medical blogs. It’s the Superbowl of blogs. Our blog was nominated for the Best New Medical Blog last year, but got our butt kicked. This year, we’re honored to be a finalist in the Best Clinical Sciences Blog category. That’s the great news. Unlucky for us, we are in the same category as the juggernauts EMCrit (also nominated in the overall Best Medical Blog category) and Resus.M.E. I do love the fact that the EM specialty is dominating with 3 finalists in this list of 5.  

With all of the amazing, sunny weather here in California, I feel (briefly) terrible for all those braving the snowpocalyptic conditions across the United States. So, in honor of all those bundled up and shivering, I wanted to review the management of accidental hypothermia. Tip: Avoid jostling the hypothermic patient too much because of myocardial irritability. Don’t send your patient into an arrhythmia.