Remember MONA (morphine, oxygen, nitro, aspirin) from med school? Well, she may be just “A” now…. Over the years, all of these treatments (except for good old aspirin) have become somewhat controversial in the treatment of ACS. Let’s focus on morphine today. Morphine’s obvious benefit is its ability to control pain and therefore decrease sympathetic […]

Have you ever taken care of really critical, undifferentiated patient, only later to find out that they were diagnosed with a serious, contagious illness? We are exposed to innumerable pathogens each day in the ED, but there are only a few that necessitate antimicrobial prophylaxis and even fewer that require prophylaxis from simply being very […]

Ever walk up to a stable, comfortable appearing patient at Elmhurst and their mouth/teeth are completely RED? Or maybe like a dark brownish/black color? Like this?? It really scared me the first I saw it as an intern. I must have asked her 100 times if she was vomiting blood. But the patient said she […]

In case you haven’t gotten to this month’s EM:RAP, there’s a really great segment on an important ED procedure that we definitely don’t do enough of in the ED: the nerve block. The section discusses the femoral nerve block and how to perform a fascia iliaca compartment block (the “3-in-1” block)–which hits 3 major nerves […]

You’re working in RESUS, and you get a notification for hypotension. He’s a 65 year old male noted to be hypotensive to 70/40 by EMS. On arrival, he’s altered and unable to provide any history, and EMS doesn’t have much more information. You don’t see any signs of trauma. Your attending suggests performing a RUSH […]