Make it So: BEEM Appraisal Tools
The Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine has been very successful in a short period of time due to the power of social media. People like you reading the blog, listening to the podcast on iTunes, following on Twitter, liking on Facebook and sharing the content. Many of you have asked for the BEEM Appraisal Tools used to critically assess the literature. As you know, BEEM was started by Dr. Andrew Worster of McMaster University. Dr. Worster developed a very unique system of creating high quality, clinically relevant and evidence based content. Check out the YouTube video on the BEEM process. The process starts by electronically searching the vast literature published daily using the Health Information Research Unit to find practice-changing emergency medicine papers. End users (Emergency Physicians around the world) are then engaged on a monthly basis to assess the relevance of these...
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SGEM#181: Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind, Pan Scan or Leave Other Scans Behind?
Podcast Link: SGEM181 Date: June 3rd, 2017 Reference: Sierink et al. Immediate total-body CT scanning versus conventional imaging and selective CT scanning in patients with severe trauma (REACT-2): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet August 2016. Guest Skeptic: Dr. Marcel Emond is an Associate Professor, Laval University, Emergency Physician at the Level 1 Trauma Center of the CHU de Québec, a Senior Clinician-Scientist, Chair of CAEP Trauma and Injury prevention committee, BEEM faculty member and the host of SGEM Global French. Case: A 53-year-old woman in good health is brought in by ambulance after a motor vehicle collision. She did not lose consciousness but did bump her head. Her main complaint is chest pain with difficulty breathing. She is tachycardic, tachypnic and has some mild abdominal pain. You suspect a flail chest on your clinical examination. A FAST examination is performed and is...
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SGEM#176: Somebody’s Watching Me – Cardiac Monitoring for Chest Pain
Podcast Link: SGEM176 Date: April 26th, 2017 Reference: Syed et al. Prospective validation of a clinical decision rule to identify patients presenting to the emergency department with chest pain who can safely be removed from cardiac monitoring. CMAJ Jan 2017 Guest Skeptics: Drs. Ryan Tam and Antony Robert are chief residents from the Royal College Emergency Medicine Program at McGill University. Ryan Tam’s academic interests include quality improvement, ultrasound and simulation. He is also involved with a start-up FOAMed site called EM-bites focused on providing point of care resources. When he is not working, he is an enthusiastic photographer, foodie and adventure traveler. Antony Robert’s academic interests include resuscitation, medical education, research, ultrasound and medical informatics. He is also the CEO of a new medical education start up, and is currently working on the first prototype. When he is not working, he...
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SGEM#169: Stuck in the Middle with Food (Glucagon for Esophageal Foreign Body Impaction)
Podcast Link: SGEM169 Date: February 2nd, 2017 Reference: Bodkin et al. Effectiveness of glucagon in relieving esophageal foreign body impaction: a multicenter study. AJEM June of 2016 Guest Skeptic: : Meghan Groth (@EMpharmGirl) is an emergency medicine pharmacist. She has contributed to the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (AliEM) and Emergency Medicine PharmD blogs, and is a member of the ALiEMU Capsules team. Case: It’s the day after St. Patrick’s Day, and you have a 28-year-old man that presents to the emergency department with difficulty swallowing. He was enjoying a feast of corned beef and cabbage several hours prior to arrival when he said it felt like “something got stuck” in his throat. He does have a history of esophageal strictures, and this has happened to him before but he thought if he washed the food down with enough Guinness he wouldn’t have...
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SGEM#153: Simulation for Ultrasound Education
Podcast Link: SGEM153 Date: May 2nd, 2016 Guest Skeptic: Dr. Chris Bond. Chris is an emergency physician and clinical lecturer at the University of Calgary. He is currently the host of CAEP Casts, which highlight educational innovations from emergency medicine residency programs across Canada. Chris also has his own #FOAMed blog called Standing on the Corner Minding My Own Business (SOCMOB). Case: An emergency medicine resident in your institution has learned some basics of ultrasound training, but feels uncomfortable performing ultrasound in a crashing patient. They come to ask you how they can learn to use their ultrasound skills in critically ill patients, other than doing it in real time. Background: Point of care ultrasound (PoCUS) can be broken down into two main categories – diagnostic applications and procedural applications. There are simulators and trainers for both types. Diagnostic Applications: When...
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SGEM#125: I’m So Excited
Podcast Link: SGEM125 Date: June 20th, 2015 The goal of the Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine (SGEM) is to shorten the knowledge translation window from over ten years down to less than one year. It accomplishes this by doing a critical appraisal of a recently published article using the Best Evidence in Emergency Medicine (BEEM) process. BEEM has the only validated audience rating tool in emergency medicine and to the best of my knowledge, the only known measure of clinical relevance. The SGEM consists of a weekly podcast available for free on iTunes and a blog. It is also tied into a Facebook page, active Twitter feed and YouTube Chanel. This is an SGEM Xtra. This week I will not be doing a structured critical review; instead I will be discussing two very exciting things happening with the SGEM. SGEM Season 2 Book:...
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SGEM#124: Ultrasound for Skull Fractures – Little Bones
Podcast Link: SGEM124 Little Bones Date: June 11th, 2015 Guest Skeptic: Dr. Greg Hall. Greg is Director of EM Ultrasound at the Brantford General Hospital in Brantford Ontario and Assistant Clinical Professor at McMaster University. He is Vice President of the Canadian Emergency Ultrasound Society, co-author of Point-of-care Ultrasound for Emergency Physicians, co-creator of the EDE 2 Course: Advanced Emergency Department Echo, and director of the EDE 3 Course, a leading edge POCUS workshop. Case: An 18 month old male presents to your small emergency department having a witnessed fall off a couch and hit his head on a hardwood floor. He threw up once and cried immediately at the scene. There was no loss of consciousness. The parents are concerned about a serious head injury, particularly with the large hematoma, but understandably are not thrilled with the idea of the...
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SGEM#119: B-Lines (Diagnosing Acute Heart Failure with Ultrasound)
Podcast Link: SGEM119 Date: April 14th, 2015 Guest Skeptics: Dr. Alan Chiem. Alan is an assistant clinical professor and the director of ultrasound at UCLA Olive View. Case: 78 year old man with a history of diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease presents with a two day history of increasing shortness of breath. He does not have any chest pain or fever. You have been doing more and more with ultrasound and wonder whether you can make the diagnosis of acute pulmonary edema before getting the standard CXR, ECG and lab tests. Background: Acute heart failure is a condition where the heart cannot pump well enough to meet the demands of the body. It can be due to a number of different causes including: myocardial infarction, arrhythmias, valvular dysfunction, pneumonia, uncontrolled hypertension, anemia, hyperthyroidism and many other causes. The diagnosis of...
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SGEM#114: Ketofol – Does It Take Two to Make a Procedure Go Right?
Podcast Link: SGEM114 Date: March 25th, 2015 Guest Skeptics: Dr. Steve Carroll. Steve is an Emergency Medicine Physician and EM Core Faculty with the US Army at San Antonio Military Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. He also does an awesome podcast called EM Basic that is your “boot camp guide to emergency medicine”. EM Basic reviews common EM topics at the level of a medical student or intern. Case: A 40-year-old male comes to the Emergency Department with a dislocated shoulder while playing football. He’s a weekend warrior and has never had any shoulder dislocations in the past. It took him about an hour to get the Emergency Department. After some pain control, you try the Cunningham and scapular manipulation to get the shoulder back in but they are not working. You decide that he needs procedural sedation. One of...
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SMACC Chicago Cup Song
The Social Medial and Critical Care (SMACC) conference came out of the Free Open Access to Medical Education (FOAMed) movement. FOAM stands for free medical education for anyone, anywhere at anytime. It’s one objective is to make the world a better place. “FOAM should not be seen as a teaching philosophy or strategy, but rather as a globally accessible crowd-sourced educational adjunct. It provides inline (contextual) and offline (asynchronous) content to augment traditional educational principles.” There have been two hugely successful SMACC meetings in Australia. This is in part because of the engaging, entertaining and inspiring speakers from around the world. It is also due to the fantastic community of doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and physician assistants passionate about emergency medicine and critical care. This year the organizers are bringing SMACC to Chicago June 23rd to 26th. Check out the registration brochure for all...
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