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

Working in emergency medicine is always a challenge, but when you work solo it can make you feel like a lone wolf. In reality, there is always help somewhere. New grad and EMPA Aaron Inouye is in a relatively unique scenario. Not only does he work in the challenging environment of a single-coverage EM provider, he does so as a new graduate. Listen to this interview no matter your career as you may find some fascinating pearls you were not expecting.

We are joined by a specialist in child abuse and neglect, Tom Balga, who is a fellow EMPA. Child abuse and neglect is not a fun subject, but it is very important as we can truly change lives. In this blog and podcast we cover some of the essentials that can be easily carried over to your next shift.

We hear plenty on the news about the opioid crisis, but we are hearing more and more about exposure to these opiates potentially harming first responders and even those in the emergency department. It begs the question, how much is enough in regards to personal protective equipment (PPE)?

Risk management expert Kevin Klauer joins us today with some rapid fire documentation pearls. We had a similar discussion focused on the MDM when we had Mike Weinstock on back in September. Hopefully, we will have both experts (and others) back again in the future but this was a great talk focusing on some key pearls that we can all bring on the next shift.

​Practice makes permanent and only perfect practice makes perfect. There have been recent conversations on "deliberate practice" which has hit FOAMed with Scott Weingart's interview of Anders Ericsson and subsequent posts. This post is not going to delve in that topic, but rather how we should be teaching and training when it comes to procedures.

​There have been recent requests for further discussion of the neurological exam. Specifically, how to do a brief neurological exam in the emergency department, how to perform a HINTS exam, and documenting the exams performed.

We need to talk about something: misinformation. Unfortunately, the world is full of it and we cannot seem to stop ourselves. The Internet was one of the greatest inventions brought forth to the modern world to allow for the rapid sharing of scientific information. We have bastardized it in time to now spread hate and grossly incorrect information. What was once a way to spread knowledge is now attacking science and what we have learned.

When we started last month's celebration of PAs for October, we discussed breaking bad news. We were then going to expand on that discussion with reference to end of life discussions. However, through some very unfortunate audio issues, we lost the original content in a way that made it so we could not present the original conversation. However, Melodie Kolmetz was gracious enough to record it again on her own and we are presenting this for our newest post.

Technically, this is the last post for PA Month here on the podcast. Fear not! There will be more PAs on podcasts coming up. However, we wanted to finish our discussion with Fred Wu since people may find this portion on contracts helpful in the immediate future.

Emergency Medicine PA Fred Wu is joining us to talk about starting and advancing a career in emergency medicine. In this two-part series, Fred is reviewing the many aspects of emergency medicine careers from finding a position that will work well for you to signing a contract.