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

Tranexamic acid (TXA) is an old drug, but one that we in emergency medicine have found love for once again. In preparation for an upcoming talk at a conference, I realized I had not yet made a post regarding TXA. This is a quick summary of TXA and links to a lot of great #FOAMed resources out there you can also check out regarding the same. I have also included one bit that I have recently found very successful but with little evidence currently. Listen to the podcast for more!

After Podcast #44 regarding how to incorporate change, our friend Patrick Bafuma reached out to provide his thoughts on how to make change happen in your department. He has championed the process and has pearls that are well worth the listen.

We are having a special episode to add to what we did with Salim Rezaie on REBEL Cast recently as a guest. While we were there, we talked a lot about the TOAST trial and reviewed our own clinical use of dexamethasone. It is definitely worth your time to visit his page and listen to that podcast. However, we wanted to add our own little supplement to the #FOAMed world by adding a detailed analysis of the paper in true BEEM fashion. Please check all of this out for a more thorough understanding of the topic.

We have talked about abscess management before both here (Podcast #13) and on the Skeptics' Guide to Emergency Medicine (Podcasts #156 and #164). Even though we have talked about using antibiotics before, there has been debate on its use in smaller abscesses. Today, we cover how antibiotics are still beneficial even for the small ones given the most recent evidence out there. Listen to podcast and read this blog for all the details as we cover different points in each.

We are joined by Tyler Christifulli, a well experienced critical care paramedic and host of the Lifestar Podcast, to discuss a proposed ventilation strategy. It is worth listening to his original podcast first to get a complete picture. I would also recommend listening to Scott Weingart's Dominating the Vent lectures on his EmCrit website if you are not very familiar with ventilator management in general. A warning in advance, there is some cursing in the podcast.

Happy Fourth of July! Today we are joined by Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) rock star Ken Milne who is known for the Skeptics' Guide to Emergency Medicine (SGEM) blog and podcast. He has been a major mentor to the TOTAL EM project and to celebrate our 50th podcast he agreed to join us for a detailed discussion on FOAMed and EBM. Both SGEM and TOTAL EM are part of the Free and Open Access to Medical Education (FOAMed) movement.

Kevin Burns is back from our last podcast for another discussion, this time specifically on Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) and prehospital care. He is assisting with some new research and we review how POCUS could be beneficial in the EMS.

Keving Burns is one of those PAs who is on the cutting edge of prehospital care. He is the co-director of the Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) Emergency Medicine PA Residency program. One of his favorite aspects of emergency medicine is prehospital care and we wanted to talk to him about some of the plans for the future of PAs in emergency medicine.

Clay Smith of EM Topics joins us today for a first-ever crossover post. His amazingly well-done blog with daily posts on clinically important papers is a must to subscribe. In today's post, we cover a review he is also publishing today regarding ramping in intubations. In this RCT, there is no benefit in the primary outcome (lowest oxygen saturation) when comparing ramping versus sniffing position. However, there is a lot more to the paper as discussed in this podcast.

Brian Lin is back for the second part of our conversation with him from the 2017 SEMPA 360 conference, but this time we are talking about two subjects with a lot of dogma: the Golden Period for wound closure and dog bite closure. This brief review is designed to remind you of some of the key components in order to better care for your patients.