EMOttawa - Emergency Medicine Ottawa

This is a post summarizing our best-rated JC articles and the ones I find are the most useful from the past academic year. Each of the articles is broken down into one to two lines as to how I have incorporated them in my practice. For a little longer summary just click on the links for the JC summaries.

1) Oral Prednisolone in the Treatment of Acute Gout: A Pragmatic, Multicenter, Double-Blind, Randomized Trial.Rainer TH, et al. 
Ann Intern Med. 2016 Feb 23. doi: 10.7326/M14-2070.
47 yo male with stable CKD presenting with gout of his first MTP joint. I’m concerned about using colchicine or NSAIDs, instead I prescribe Prednisone 30mg/day for 5 days. 

2) Part 1: Executive Summary: 2015 American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular CareNeumar RW, Shuster M, Callaway CW, et al.
Circulation. 2015 Nov 3;132(18 Suppl 2):S315-67
For all those unfortunate patients with in and out of hospital arrest. Too many changes to mention but ther…

Our wonderful medical students are preparing to start their first clinical rotations. With this in mind here are some of the top tips for success in your EM rotation
1)Be On Time – show up to your shifts on time, better yet 5 minutes early.That first impression is immensely important.
2)Introduce yourself to the team - “Hi my name is John Doe, I am the medical student on shift today” introduce yourself to the attending, residents, nurses, etc.You will be called on a lot more to help when there is something interesting going on if they know your name.
3)Be goal-oriented – have a goal for each shift, whether it’s a procedure or a type of presentation to see.
4)Don’t just stand there, do something – whenever there is a trauma or code, come to the bedside.Get gowned up for traumas and pay attention.Help with things that are within your scope of practice: chest compressions, moving patient, cardioversion
5)Don’t just stand there, do nothing – there are times in medicine when the best thing to d…