There is a man living in New York City who once suffered a traumatic brain injury and is now frequently brought into our ED by EMS with a chief complaint of “seizure.” Often providers order labs, imaging and medications, prescriptions he doesn’t fill and make clinic appointments he never attends. He appears disheveled so many assume he is addicted to alcohol and has seizures due to withdrawal.
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The new 2020 PEM Guide has been released! 183 PEM topics covered concisely in this free, point of care reference.
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“PEM (Pediatric Emergency Medicine) Guides was developed as an online, point of care resource for the residents and medical students who work with us in our pediatric emergency departments.
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Graduation Speech
Lewis R. Goldfrank, MD
(June 12, 2019)
Congratulations on your graduation. This milestone and the commencement of your increased independence are a tribute to your fine work. Your future accomplishments will be substantial.
Your team
You as a class will have developed immensely profound bonds.
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“Take one more look. Surgery will prep the neck in the meantime.”
Emergency medicine is a cruel field. The more I learn, the more I realize my deficiencies, my weaknesses, my fears. As I uncover the intricacies and nuances of this specialty, questions continue to arise. The scope of practice is ever growing and self-doubt seems to only grow with experience.
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“What’s your airway plan, Michelle?”
To be quite frank, I don’t think I actually listened to what my junior said in response. Without much thought, I promptly replied (in my big boy voice), “Awesome, I’m going to help you set up.”
Since July, I’ve been told that I’m a “senior resident.” I’ve also been told (by Uncle Ben),
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For most of this site’s readers, first year of med school is well in the past. You’ve moved on from the monotony of books and PowerPoints to the revelation of actual cases. You see the subtle connections between text and reality, develop pattern recognition, and learn how medicine actually works. If you entered medical school expecting to heal the world,
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Teaching on a clinical shift can sometimes be difficult: it’s busy, everyone’s running around and it’s hard to capture a trainees attention. Recently, on twitter, Amal Mattu (@amalmattu) has been posting pictures of his white board teaching: discrete pearls written down and shared with anyone who walks by. The pearls are often prompted by patients presenting during that shift but they don’t have to be.
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“Code Blue in the waiting room!”
As my co-resident, attending, and I sprinted down the hall, I vividly remember thinking to myself that I probably shouldn’t be here right now. I was working upstairs in the surgical ICU. On a particularly slow overnight, I decided to head down to the ED to visit some friends.
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