For other ultrasound cases see our POCUS archives Case Vignette 63-year-old male presents with a two-day history of groin pain and swelling. He has a history of hypertension and smoking. He takes an anti-hypertensive medication and an atypical antipsychotic for sleeping. The patient denies abdominal pain, nausea/vomiting, back pain, fevers, trauma.Read More →
I’ve recently spent some time thinking about what it means to be a mentor. We’re often thrust into this role – with very little training on how to actually do this. I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a plethora of excellent mentors and residents, and have noted some clear observationsRead More →
For other POCUS focused cases please see our ultrasound archives Case The next chart you pick up is for an 87 year-old female brought in by EMS from her nursing home for agitation and vomiting. She is afebrile and her vital signs are normal. She has a past medical historyRead More →
In this two part series, we are delving into a few of the many controversies regarding procedural sedation and explore how to reduce resource utilization and ED length of stay. In PART 1, we discussed preprocedural fasting and concluded that adherence to fasting guidelines is unnecessary in healthy patients undergoing proceduralRead 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 →
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 →