What a wonderful (IT) world

Last night I lay comfortably in my bed, not being able to sleep. I plugged the miniature headphones to my Android and listened to Scott Weingart's EMCrit podcasts on treating the severe asthma patient. After that Amal Mattu's EM Cast about a 2 year old lethargic child with fever and that's when I Mr. Mattu started to echo and I found my self drifting away into the world of jumping sheep.

Earlier this week I was asked to have a short clinical case for my colleges in the hospital and as preparation time was essentially none I picked three excellent 5-minute videos from HQMedEd, all presenting a clinical scenario where the ultrasound in the ED saved the patients life (walkin and talkin!). I had even prepared to show Vanderbuilt's ultrasound video collection to show my ED colleges that learning to use ultrasound in year 2010 doesn't require an expensive international course - just a comfortable sofa with your laptop/mobile and some interest in the field!

Then, preparing for an exam next week - the insanely great Lifeinthefastlane has provided me with invaluable texts on everything I ever wanted to know about ECG, arrhythmias, electrolyte disorders (and other lab-abberancies), intoxications and ED medicines like Magnesium in acute asthma. It's so much more than just a blog. Of course I have my dear Tintinalli resting quietly in the book-shelf, just in case - but LITFL has simply provided me with everything I need to know. It's a true emergency medicine website; written by emergency physicians for emergency physicians - just the facts. The cream of the cake. The brass of the music.
With all this knowledge at the top of my cortex I was prepared for that unconscious patient the other day presenting with a new LBBB which I correctly diagnosed as hyper-K induced. After some insulin+glucose, a new ECG revealed a normal sinus rythm and a resource-draining trip to the angio-lab was spared.


And I haven't told you all the useful things I've learned by reading through my RSS subscriptions... oh my oh my...