For Emergency Physicians, neonatal “issues” often fall into one of two categories: 1) terrible, life-threatening disasters (ex, Necrotizing Enterocolitis, HSV, Congenital Heart Disease) and (2) I have no clue what that is, but it seems like your Primary Care Provider…
In general, I try to do things that make my life easier. Selfish or Brilliant? I’ll let you decide. But on occasion, choices that we think should make things easier actually can be counterproductive. A great example of this is…
During the course of a shift in the Emergency Department, I occasionally need to remind myself to rethink my diagnosis. Fighting diagnostic momentum can be difficult. That is why we look thoroughly for “Red Flags” (like we’ve talked about with…
We have recently discussed how neonatal seizures are often very subtle and, unfortunately, commonly related to significant pathology (infection, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopahty, intracranial hemorrhage, hypoglycemia, inborn errors of metabolism, etc). Once we determine that we are dealing with a seizure, we…
Apparent Life-Threatening Event (ALTE) Being specialists of emergencies we are facile with managing events that have the potential to threaten a person’s life. It is interesting, then, that when a child presents to the ED with an Apparent Life-Threatening Event…
Omphalitis – Is that a normal umbilical stump or something serious? Certainly one of the most challenging (and either stimulating or completely terrifying) aspects of emergency medicine is how the seemingly innocuous can belie the sinister and devastating. For example,…
No one wants to inform a family that their child has a malignancy, but our jobs certainly place us in a position where it is occasionally necessary for us to do so. While this may not be an aspect that…