EPM executive editor Mark Plaster sat down with emergency medicine opinion leaders and informaticists for a candid discussion about the future of electronic medical records (EMR) featuring Rick Bukata, MD; Bruce Janiak, MD & Nicholas Genes, MD, PhD

Cramped airline seats might be putting you at more risk than you realize. Luckily, there are evidence-based strategies for safer travels.

If you were to ask pretty much any layman if they thought that it was required that hospital personnel get flu shots, I dare say that most would answer yes. After all, it makes sense. Our nurses and doctors should be protected from getting the flu from patients and patients should be expected not to get the flu from the doctors and staff.

A look at the psychiatric medical screening exam (PMSE), and the age-old misconceptions that too often pit one specialty against another.
Nothing seems to illicit suicidal ideations in me more then arguing with a psychiatrist or mental health nurse that a patient I have evaluated and cleared for psychiatric evaluation does not need a battery of tests prior to transfer.

EP-turned-CMIO Steven Davidson talks frankly about the challenges of qualifying for Meaningful Use.

Last spring the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published a ruling which threatened to take deep sedation medications like propofol out of the hands of emergency physicians. This January, after months of negotations involving ACEP, AAEM and ENA, CMS offered a clarification that is a clear win for emergency medicine.

Laryngoscopy in infants and small children is a technically easier procedure than in adults. Mouth opening, jaw joint mobility, and dentition are all more favorable for laryngeal exposure in children vs adults.

The potential is not news to anyone.  Two numbers say it all: one-half and more than three.  Half the U.S. population comes to an emergency department each year as a patient or a visitor. What researcher wouldn’t dream of access to such a large, captive audience every year? But EPs simply don’t have the time to take advantage of this opportunity.

Dr. Chris Carpenter speaks with Art Sanders, MD, one of the authors of ‘Chest compression-only CPR by lay rescuers and survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest’ (JAMA 2010)

To survive and prosper under healthcare reform emergency medicine (EM) must redefine and reinvent itself. EM will not be able to continue doing business as usual, standing on the Prudent Layperson dictum that “the patient defines the emergency.”