Free Open Access Medical Education for Paramedics, Nurses, & EMTs
Welcome to the very first edition of 5 Fast Facts Friday! This is a segment that will become available every Friday, and will include, just as the name implies, five fast facts. There may be a theme to this weekly post, or it may include five completely random puffs of FOAM. My goal with Ditch Doc EM has been to keep each post as brief as possible, but you can be sure that 5F³ will be faster than the ticker of a WPW patient on cocaine! Continue reading “5 Fast Facts Friday”
It has often been said that the smartest people don’t know everything, they simply know how to access the information they need, when they need it. Check out these 5 outstanding medical apps that make my life easier, and will probably do the same for you. Continue reading “5 Awesome Medical Apps You Probably Didn’t Know About”
Cushing’s triad, which consists of widening pulse pressure, decreasing pulse, and abnormal (often Cheyne-Stokes) respirations, is usually a significant indication of increased intracranial pressure. Unfortunately, this is usually a very late sign, and irreversible damage may have already been done. Continue reading “Intracranial Hemorrhage Pearls”
Knowing your patient’s Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) is far more important than their blood pressure. This is because MAP represents the average arterial pressure during an entire cardiac cycle. Here’s some MAP basics to get your neurons firing! Continue reading “Reading the MAP without a compass.”
When presented with a young child who does not appear particularly sick, it can be tempting to assume that the parents are just being over cautious. Kids are tough, though, and sometimes identifying a pathology, especially early on, can require a little more legwork than in an adult patient. Croup is a particularly dangerous childhood illness, and our little patients deserve this extra legwork. Continue reading “Over-worried parents, or a potentially fatal pediatric illness?”
An important thing to remember when assessing your patients, is that low blood pressure is not shock. On that same token, high blood pressure does not rule out shock. I’m sure that everyone has probably heard that tachycardia may be one of the first indicators of shock… but what else can tell us? Enter the shock index. Continue reading “Is your patient in occult shock?”
