A Magazine for Craftmakers
Abominable Abdominal pain
Situation Abdominal pain is a common presentation to the ED roughly 7% of all ED attendances.[1] There remains to be a substantial proportion of these patients who remain undiagnosed. On the flip side of this the most common surgical emergency to present to the ED is appendicitis. Image courtesy of theplaguedoctor.blog @theplaguemd Abdominal pain can […]
Horses and Zebras and Flesh-eating Bacteria…oh my!!
Situation It’s a well-known observation that some staff, more commonly new doctors, jump to a farfetched diagnosis when often the simplest is the most likely. Hence the phrase “hear hooves: think horses not zebras”. Think back to the patient with a rattly cough who has a differential of something obscure like lymphangioleiomyomatosis when actually they […]
Self Development is the way to go
Hi Everyone well this is the first post for the website and its mostly an introduction as to what we are trying to achieve. What you can expect from this website is a one stop shop for all things ED education, this is going to be mostly aimed at nurses/HCA’s/ODP’s working in ED as oppose […]
Between the Lines #3 – Caring for Arterial Lines
Good news, my writers block is cured! Bad news, it took a patient incident to unblock it; let me tell you a little story about my recent night shift… Startled from my note writing by loud shouts for help from my colleague who was stuck in a lonely side room, my usually cucumber cool colleague […]
A right pain in the… chest!
Situation Chest pain is one of the most common ED presentations, accounting for between 5 and 8% of ED attendances in the US every year[1]. Chest pain can have numerous causes and it’s important for us to distinguish between the life threatening and the not-so-much. As an ED nurse your assessment of the patient may […]
Casey and the case of the missed diagnosis
Meet Casey. She arrived at your emergency department one Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago. She’s a cheerful, previously healthy 19 year old part way through her second year at your local Higher Education institution. She’s also just spent 4 days on Critical Care, and is the subject of a Serious Untoward Incident/Level 3 investigation […]
Raising the (S)BAR on Handovers…
t’s widely recognised that those of us who choose to spend our working hours in an Emergency Department are easily distracted. We thrive on the adrenaline, the chaos, and the fast change of pace. But if you’re anything like me, those traits make stringing a coherent handover together a bit tricky. I regularly find myself […]
EDeducate on tour – the EMEC
So, our first conference report on EDeducate. On June 11th Harmony, Liz, Ashleigh, Kirsten and I descended on Birmingham for the Emergency Medicine Educators Conference organised by Scott Carrington. It was an excellent programme: so I’ll try to summarise some of the educational pearls I, as a non-educationalist ED person, brought from it. Our own […]
The Introduction
This podcast links very nicely to everything already on the website and is a guide to ‘what we are trying to achieve’ We hope you like it! Jingle to be changed and sound quality to be worked on.. bear with us For Apple users For Android users
Patient assessment
This episode is the first ‘proper’ one and we are discussing triage and assessment at the front door in line with the framework CCT1- the whole part of CCT1 knowledge and skills. We have mentioned a few documents in the podcast so they are linked below for your viewing pleasure. We are still trying to get the […]
Only ‘Human’
Hi guys! Slight confession to this blog, it may cause you to open the proverbial can of worms that is Human Factors and Non-Technical Skills and make you want to delve more into it! This is ok…. but it may take up some of your time. A few links within this blog to other amazing […]
Workshops at the EMEC Clinical Decision Making – How to Teach Expertise
he EMEC always has a stellar line up of workshops and this year was no exception. It was a difficult choice to decide which workshops to go to – you get to choose to attend 2 out of 4 possible options, resulting in major FOMO for the workshops you miss. However, even after just a […]