• Blog

The Climate Crisis – How will air pollution affect my patients health?

Globally, climate change is recognised as one of the leading determinants of health with health outcomes predicted to worsen as the globe continues to warm. But how does this affect me, in the UK? And how will this affect my patients, and the care they receive? And what can I do about it?
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Traumatic Cardiac Arrest Blog

Imagine it's 2am and the Red Phone rings. A 26-year-old male, fallen off motorcycle, in traumatic cardiac arrest. Your heart races, youre excited, but you feel way out of your depth. You know theres loads to prepare and often there isnt much notice. What do you do?
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The Diabetic Foot

Weve all seen diabetic foot presentations in the ED but many more of them are managed successfully in primary care and podiatry clinics. As in many other areas, the ED has a huge role to play in prevention as well as treatment.
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Vaginal Specula in the ED… Why, When and How

A few considerations for why ED practitioners should all be comfortable at performing speculum examinations and bimanual examinations.
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Incision and Drainage in the ED

This blog considers how to perform an I&D in the ED and how those familiar with the procedure might set up practical training sessions.
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Pearls and Pitfalls of Personality Disorder

What happens if your personality is disordered or disrupted by psychiatric illness? How can your self then be accurately discerned from your personality disorder? Where does the condition end and you begin?
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Functional Seizures

This blog article aims to consolidate several resources and anecdotal practice around functional seizures.
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EmbRACE: What we learnt from starting an anti-racism campaign

In May 2021, as we emerged from the second wave of Covid in the UK, we felt the time was right to make a change. Covid had highlighted significant racial health inequalities.
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An Approach to Paediatric Oncological Presentations in the Emergency Department

The ED often plays a vital role in making the first diagnosis of cancer.
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Pacing in the ED

Our curriculum mentions pacing, and we all think that we know all about that as weve got ALS right? Some of our brief discussions on twitter highlighted that pacing can be more complicated than ALS implies, and actually isnt very common in ED.
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The Whole* of PEM, in One Blog

PEM Top Tips SLO5
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SLO6 – Practical Procedures

We thought we'd create this mini summary of the resources we've found here and elsewhere to enable you to get the background to proficiently deliver and teach emergency medicine skills.
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Non Invasive Ventilation

This guide is not intended for those who are experienced ITU types, however, if you are one of the millions of front-line staff looking to help during our latest respiratory pandemic with little experience in the use of NIV please read on.
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Malignant Spine Presentations

Here are two cases of oncological and palliative care emergencies that might present to the emergency department, that we should know how to treat.
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Neonate with blood in the nappy: look beyond the cracked nipples!

Rob, a 15-day old neonate has been brought to ED by his mum, Lucy, after she noticed some streaks of blood in his nappy. He was born at 39 weeks by spontaneous vaginal delivery after an uncomplicated pregnancy and has been exclusively breast fed since birth.
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Acting like a Boss

So you are thinking of acting up? CONGRATULATIONS - it means the end of your training is in sight. According to the RCEM guidance, you would need to have passed FRCEM and be in the final year of training, so you're nearly over the finish line.
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Inexpensive Teaching Models for Fascia Iliaca Blocks

Most of us are convinced that fascia iliac blocks for pain relief are fabulous. Models to teach and practice on can be expensive. Inspired by one of the ED registrars I work with, Dr Grace OConnell, I am going to show how to make a simple model for simulating going through the fascial layers at the hip.
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DNA CPR in the ED

DNA CPR or do not attempt resuscitation decisions are confusing to many. If discussed sensitively and correctly, they make a huge huge huge immeasurable difference to the hospital stay of the patient, and their relatives.
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Hypnosis and EM

If we told you we knew of a medical practice thats been around since the 18th century, with a strong evidence base, that can be utilised by any emergency physician, for the majority of patients (and colleagues), thats free to deliver, costing only time, youd probably think we were deluded. We're not... it's hypnosis.
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Ear me out!

Ear trauma is a common presentation to the Emergency Department. Whilst generally simple to manage, the consequences of ear trauma have the potential to impact patients day-to-day lives significantly
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Communication in the ED

We become (mostly) emergency practitioners to reduce suffering of patients - not all suffering is pain, and both suffering and pain can be reduced by compassionate communication.
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Male Urological Issues part 2 – Urethral Catheterisation

Part 2 of our urological problems in men blog - focussing on catheterisation and problems associated with it.
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Male Urological issues in the ED Part 1

Urology presentations are fairly common to the emergency department, and we hope this just in time reminder will emphasise some of the key management points.
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RCEM VSC 2020

I must admit, it felt a bit strange, taking a day off work as study leave to sit in my joggers in front of the laptop, but this is definitely The Way To Conference.