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 →
Let’s start off with a case: 29 year old male, HR: 140, BP: 70/40, Temperature of 39.1. Sounds like straight forward, bread-and-butter emergency medicine doesn’t it? That is, until you look at the past medical history: Single Ventricle Hypoplastic RV Left AV Valve Atresia Large Ventricular Septal Defect Patent FormalRead More →
One of the questions I am asked most frequently by learners is how they may improve and optimize their flow of patients in the Emergency Department (ED). I found through my education that this was not something implicitly taught, but absorbed by watching more senior staff work in the ED.Read More →
The vast majority of burns that present to the ED can be managed as outpatients1,2, usually by the patient’s family doctor, but many emergency physicians do not feel comfortable with burn management. Burn management often follows the preferences and experiences of plastic surgeons, so the overarching caveat for everything belowRead More →
Consider world champion tennis player Roger Federer. He represents one of the most successful professional athletes of our time. To what does he owe his success? While he undoubtedly possesses a remarkable amount of motivation, dedication, and athleticism, there is another factor to consider. He has a coach. In fact,Read More →
Chest pain is a common presenting complaint to Emergency Departments (ED) worldwide. Massive resource investment is required to differentiate benign from sinister causes of chest pain, and for the treatment, referral, and risk stratification of chest pain patients. A cardiac etiology of chest pain is found in roughly 15% ofRead More →