Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Academic physicians must be able to access the resources necessary to support their ongoing professional development and meet requirements for continued academic advancement. The authors sought to determine the self-perceived career development needs of junior clinical faculty in emergency medicine (EM) and the availability of educational resources to meet those needs. ⋯ Junior clinical faculty in EM perceive a lack of educational resources in a number of areas of faculty development. The academic community of EM should strive to improve awareness of and access to currently existing resources and to develop additional resources to address the area of physician wellness. The lack of mentorship in academic EM continues to be a problem in search of a solution.
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Oral presentations are a critical element in the communication of medical knowledge between students and faculty, but in most locations, the amount of time spent on teaching the oral presentation is minimal. Furthermore, the standard oral presentation does not work well within the emergency medicine (EM) setting, due to time constraints and the different principles that make EM a unique specialty. This article provides a suggested approach on how to educate students on optimal oral presentations in EM, as well as providing a link to an online guide instructing medical students how to give oral presentations.
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Multicenter Study
Children with bacterial meningitis presenting to the emergency department during the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine era.
The epidemiology of bacterial meningitis in children in the era of widespread heptavalent conjugate pneumococcal vaccination (PCV7) is unknown. ⋯ Although now a rare infectious disease in United States, bacterial meningitis still causes substantial morbidity in affected children. Despite the introduction of PCV7, S. pneumoniae remains the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in U.S. children, with approximately half of cases due to nonvaccine serotypes.
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The objective was to evaluate the prevalence of limited health literacy and its association with sociodemographic variables in emergency department (ED) patients. ⋯ In this sample, one-quarter of ED patients would be expected to have difficulty understanding health materials and following prescribed treatment regimens. Advanced age and low socioeconomic status were independently associated with limited health literacy. The ability of a significant subgroup of ED patients to understand health information, especially during illness or injury, requires further study.
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The authors performed a systematic review to evaluate published literature on diagnostic performance of emergency physician-performed ultrasonography (EPPU) for the diagnosis and exclusion of deep venous thrombosis (DVT). ⋯ Systematic review of six studies suggests that EPPU may be accurate for the diagnosis of DVT compared with radiology-performed ultrasound (US). However, given the methodologic limitations identified among the primary studies, the estimates of diagnostic test performance may be overly optimistic. Further research into EPPU for suspected DVT is needed before it can be adopted into routine clinical practice.