All in Internship

Flu season. It's that magical time of year that brings an unrelenting wave of patients to the ED. In this EMEd lecture we review an algorithmic approach to these patients. It's important to always consider the life threatening infections before anchoring on a viral etiology. Be hyper vigilant if your patient has a wild card like immunosuppression.

Your patient presents with right upper quadrant abdominal pain. The Liver function tests, lipase, and right upper quadrant ultrasound have all be ordered. Be sure to have a clear understanding to do with the data when it comes back. In this EMEd lecture we review biliary problems. We review the diagnostic criteria and treatment strategy for symptomatic cholelithiasis, acute cholecystitis, choledocholithiasis, gallstone pancreatitis, and cholangitis.

So your patient said they were hypotensive but now their bp is fine. What are you supposed to do now? Do you just anchor on his or her bp meds as the cause of the hypotension? In this EMEd lecture we review a systematic approach for these patients. We develop a critical differential based on the causes of shock and then we walk through the work up and the conundrum of whether to admit or dispo these patients.

In this lecture we present the approach to a patient with a chief complaint of shortness of breath. We start by reviewing the chief complaint for shortness of breath. Next we discuss how to assess for the degree of respiratory distress the patient is in. Finally we discuss how the degree of respiratory distress determines what resuscitative steps the provider will take.