Procedural sedation is commonly performed in the Emergency Department. It is a critical tool that helps facilitate unpleasant but often necessary procedures that our patients would otherwise not tolerate. However, procedural sedation is also an extraordinarily resource-intensive endeavor. Most often, it requires cardiac monitoring and many interprofessional personnel. Also, despiteRead More →
Conversion Disorder Functional Neurological Disorder is not a diagnosis of exclusion. It is a diagnosis based on positive clinical features. Definitions: Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms (MUPS) Patient complaints and symptoms for which no medical etiology is identified Somatic Symptom Disorder Somatic symptoms that are distressing to a patient for at least 6Read More →
In this post, we cover the often seen, but poorly understood entity of Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD). We will focus our discussion on the key features and approaches that the front-line provider needs to know to feel confident managing the newly diagnosed ILD patient, the ILD flare, and the crashingRead More →
In the Emergency Department (ED) we’re always thinking about the “ABC’s”. You’ve also probably heard of “DEFG: Don’t Ever Forget Glucose”. This usually refers to hypoglycemia in our critically ill patients—those with decreased level of consciousness, new onset seizures, sepsis, and so on. But what about hyperglycemia? Much ink hasRead More →
Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAiD, was first legalized in Canada in 2016. At first glance, it may have seemed that this legislation, while an important step in Canadian medical care, would have fairly little impact on our practice in the Emergency Department (ED). However, as the ED is theRead More →
Comprehensively discussing sepsis in the Emergency Department (ED) in a three-page blog is quite frankly, impossible. You would be hard-pressed to find a disease process that has undergone such dramatic change over the past two decades. Through it all, we still do not have a complete grasp of what sepsisRead More →
As we were preparing for our “Critical Care Week” here at the EM Ottawa Blog, I was thinking I should definitely tap into the knowledge of an ICU physician whom I know very well. That physician is also my awesome wife, Dr. Erin Rosenberg. She’s been a staff intensivist atRead More →
Systemic fibrinolysis (SF) in acute pulmonary embolism (PE) remains a hot topic in acute care medicine. This post will examine the available literature regarding the use of SF in different subtypes of PE. Before examining the literature, we first must review the relevant nomenclature. Defining PE The American Heart AssociationRead More →
To open up Critical Care week, resuscitation and trauma expert Dr. George Mastoras provides us with some tips to improve your (and your team’s) resuscitation and crisis resource management skills. 1. Make teamwork everyone’s business ‘Team orientation’ is associated with higher team performance, especially among Flash teams, like those involved inRead More →
Emergency medicine is a diverse specialty. We’ve all had the shift where you go from suturing an elderly woman’s scalp, to managing an anxious patient with chest pain, to running a cardiac arrest as EMS patches in with a trauma. We wear many hats throughout a single shift and it’sRead More →