First Year Masters in Emergency Medicine Survival Guide

First Year Masters in Emergency Medicine Survival Guide I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome you all to our Masters programme in Emergency Medicine. I’m sure most of you are feeling overwhelmed, confused and would appreciate some guidance into the year, as I did when I first enrolled. Thus, I have jotted down tips I have acquired and come to know over the whole year, (most times learnt the difficult way). The following are topics you must know INSIDE-OUT. These topics have a 100% probability of coming out in one exam or another: Physiology ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Cardiovascular Physiology Respiratory Physiology Acid-base Fluids and blood products

Pathophysiology ✔ ✔ ✔

Types of shock, Classes of shock Acute coronary syndrome Asthma/COPD

Pharmacology In pharmacology you need to know the indications, contraindications, presentations, mechanism of actions, routes and dosages, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics of the drug. Don’t worry, these can be found in Martin and Sasada. The important pharmacology topics are: ✔ ✔

✔

✔

Inotropes ○ Dopamine ○ Dobutamine ○ Adrenaline ○ Noradrenaline Neuromuscular Blockers ○ Suxamethonium ○ Atracurium ○ Vecuronium ○ Rocuronium Induction Agents ○ Midazolam

○ ○ ○ ✔

Propofol Ketamine Etomidate

Opiates ○ Morphine ○ Fentanyl ○ Pethidine

Anatomy ✔

Anatomy of the airway

✔ Anatomy of the endotracheal tube, laryngeal mask airway, laryngoscope Skills ✔

Rapid Sequence Induction

✔ Airway management – oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal, intubation Others Advanced Cardiology Life Support (ACLS) Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Emergency Medicine course is structured in such a way that the knowledge you need to know above is ABSOLUTELY essential for work in the Emergency Department.

Recommended Textbooks Physiology Vander’s

Costanzo

Guyton

Pharmacology Martin Sasada

Pathophysiology Rang & Dale

Ganong

Clinical Sarawak Handbook

Kerry Brandis

Frank Shan

Tintinalli

Absolutely ESSENTIAL textbooks:

✔ Kerry Brandis ✔ Martin Sasada ✔

Tintinally

Tips and Tricks ✔

Use your time in the anaesthesia posting to learn as much as you can about induction agents, paralytic agents and physiology (anaesthetists are generally experts on physiology!). This is also the time to acquire skills, for example, in intubation.

✔ Make full use of the generally more laid-back time (shyyy, don’t tell Prof!) in anaesthesia to study for

the Part 1 exams! You are guaranteed to be much more busy and tired (therefore less quality time studying), when doing the Emergency Medicine posting.

✔ Make sure you attend ALL of Dr Idzwan’s teachings. ✔ Having a camera is recommended for taking pictures of ECGs, Xrays, patients (get consent first). Every time you encounter interesting cases, take notes and pictures of them. It is always good to have a collection of these for M&M meetings.

✔ Emergency medicine is teamwork and best results are usually achieved through politeness and respect

for your colleagues, nursing staff and people from other departments. It is never wrong to support and help each other in clinical work as well as in academic. Most importantly, enjoy yourself!

✔ From the beginning of each of your postings, be on the look-out for interesting cases and keep the patient sticker labels. You need to do 2 case write-ups for each of your posting for submission.

Logbook Throughout your 4 years, keep a logbook of procedures that you have done e.g. intubation, central line insertions, wound closure and suturing, chest drains. Keep the patient’s sticker label every time you do any procedures and stick it into your logbook. Record the date, the type of procedure and the indication of the procedure in your logbook. Recommended free softwares

✔ Firefox browser, with Scrapbook add-on installed (great for saving web pages for offline viewing)

✔ Evernote (keep and view notes anywhere and it syncs with your computer) ✔ Fox-it PDF (much much better and faster than Acrobat Reader!) ✔

Some of the recommended textbooks above are available in electronic format (ask us if you would like them)