I am currently on my emergency medicine rotation - and the way that it is set up, I spend about 50% of my time in Fasttrack and 50% in emergent care. I must say, I love it. I'm always busy and the variety is only matched by primary/urgent care. I had a 2pm-midnight shift recently in which I saw necrotizing fasciitis, a bowel obstruction, s/p bone marrow transplant patient with a platelet count of 11 and a fever of 103, a 1 year old that ate dog poop, a testicular torsion rule out, and a couple scalp lacerations (just to name a few).
Everyone recommended Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine which is, of course, an excellent resource - however, I also found this pdf document created by the University of Toronto called, ABCs of Emergency Medicine. It rocks. It outlines the most pertinent things of each diagnosis and also discusses in sufficient details suturing, airway protection, digital blocks, etc. The only weakness of this packet is that there are few diagrams/pictures... but for free, this packet is AMAZING.
In addition, one of the residents created an abridged version (easier to read on the your smart phone!)
You forgot about the most critical role of any ED clinician, babysitting drunks!
ReplyDeleteThere is a fair amount of debauchery associated with the ED :-)
ReplyDelete