TOTAL EM - Tools Of the Trade and Academic Learning in Emergency Medicine

Does it actually matter how you dress when you go to work? The BMJ recently published an open access article covering this exact issue. Although in many ways limited, this study offered some key insights regarding how our dress attire in different settings could potentially impact patient perceptions.

Too often we find ourselves fighting trolls and people both on social media and sometimes in real life. Most of the time though, we are not able to engage in any form of real debate and discussion. In this blog and podcast, we talk about how to meaningfully discuss and properly debate in any situation, especially on social media.

Excited delirium has been covered quite a bit, but like other hot topics it is always changing with new evidence. Here are some of the key pearls and pitfalls to managing this high risk population.

The last 100 podcasts has been a major milestone. Now that we are in the triple digits, it is worth reviewing some of the highlights from the first 100 episodes. Also, we have a major announcement to share!

When you hear five of anything in regards to emergency medicine, you have to think of Ken Milne who is an evidence based medicine (EBM) guru in the field of emergency medicine (EM). He hosts The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine (The SGEM) and is a major advocate in cutting down the knowledge translation (KT) window down from over 10 years to less than one year. In true celebratory fashion for the 100th podcast, Ken came on to discuss being a skeptic by reviewing five examples of when EM got ahead of the evidence.

The first time you see it, there can be any number of emotions. On some patients, it looks like their chest is being caved in by a machine. On other patients, it feels like a smooth and controlled aspect of an otherwise difficult resuscitation. There are many opinions and stories about mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation (mCPR), but the evidence may surprise you and lead to the question: does it work?

​Mobile Stroke Units (MSUs) are ambulances that are designed to improve the time of delivery of stroke care to patients. This sounds like an excellent idea at the surface, but is the cost and approach practical?

​Recently, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) launched their 2018 update. Although sepsis bundles have been brought up in the past, they are now pushing the limits by introducing a revised "hour-1 bundle" with the initiating time starting in triage. Initially, this may not seem like a big deal, but there are significant implications.

Patients die. It is a reality we all must face. But what happens after you call the code? This is when you may meet a death investigator such as Darren Dake. He hosts the popular Coroner Talk website which has a weekly podcast. After being invited to come onto his show, we wanted to share the conversation on our site to both help promote his work and to discuss some of the key points we can do to help facilitate a death investigation.

Fritz Fuller has been gone for a while but joins us for a discussion of lung ultrasound with its application specifically for pneumothorax. This is probably something you have learned or at least heard of before, but rarely does an introductory course get into the details we are going to discuss in this post.