practice updates

The decision between academic and community medicine can be difficult. Many who enter academic EM feel unprepared. This post discusses the difference between academic and community EM, and if you are interested in academic EM, pearls on succeeding in academics.

The patient with fever in the ED is a common occurrence. There are many etiologies for fever including non-infectious and infectious causes, some life-threatening. This post is full of pearls and pitfalls in the evaluation and management of patients with fever in the ED.

Well appearing patients who present to the emergency department (ED) rarely have serious disease. However, there are some conditions that can cause otherwise healthy patients to rapidly deteriorate. This article reviews a few conditions that can affect otherwise healthy patients and how to diagnose and treat these patients in the ED.

Managing Sexual Assault in the Emergency Department
This review will address patient stabilization, provide recommendations for obtaining a medical and assault history, and detail pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection prophylaxis. An in-depth discussion of the forensic examination will be omitted, as requirements regarding healthcare provider training, tools contained within forensic collection kits, time allotted between alleged assault and court admissible evidence collection, and chain of custody legislation vary according to individual state law.

The patient with a Foley catheter is common in the ED. Patients with these catheters can experience several complications, one of the most common being a catheter-associated UTI. This post evaluates this complication, with pearls, pitfalls, and some key components of evaluation and management.

Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) is an important complication of sexually transmitted diseases. Adequate treatment is important to prevent complications such as infertility and systemic disease. This is a brief overview of PID , its workup and management in the emergency department.

This is the first of a two-part series on surgical emergencies. This series discusses “cannot miss” diagnoses that require immediate, or at least emergent, surgical intervention.

A significant number of patients in the ED present with psychiatric complaints. Unfortunately, the resources available for these patients have not kept up with with the increase in psychiatric issues. Emergency medicine acts as a safety net for a large percentage of these patients. These patients present significant challenges to emergency providers. This post is full of pearls for providers managing the psychiatric patient.

“Can’t Intubate Can’t Ventilate” is one of the frightening statements that causes massive surges of adrenaline in everyone. Unfortunately, most neural synapses don’t function well with that large surge of adrenaline, and it is, therefore, imperative to contemplate how to manage this scenario before it arises.