It is with gratitude to the talented, energetic teachers of emergency medicine, past and present, that we have created this text. Inspired by their lessons, methods, and insights, we have attempted, within this new textbook, to offer the reader core information for the practice of emergency medicine and communicate this information in a relevant, useful, and interesting way. Great teachers don't just have extensive knowledge. They also have enthusiasm, creativity, and passion. Further, they have the ability to motivate learners, to reinforce their understanding of lessons, to enhance their retention of information, and to ena-ble them to transfer the knowledge to their own practice.
Great teachers understand the adult learner. Adult learners—our residents and ourselves—demand engagement, relevancy, and a goal orientation. The best teachers help the learner focus, remember, and apply. Clinical teachers find themselves reaching for a piece of paper to draw an algorithm, create a list, or help a learner construct a table. They engage the learner in lively interaction with guidance through memory aids or compact bites of information that will assist learners to recall and apply the information.
Based on these principles, this text provides no excessive recitation of information in extended prose passages. The chapters are discrete units, broken down into focused passages by subheadings. Information is explained with energy, at a depth sufficient for insight and understanding. This text is intended to be visual. An abundance of figures, tables, algorithms, and photos help emphasize the important messages. The many algorithms force the reader to actively engage the information, consider each decision point, and work through the clinical reasoning.
The chapter topics are not merely academic but are highly relevant to clinical practice for both the expert and the learner. For example, instructions for ultrasound technique are provided in short, focused chapters that are placed alongside related clinical chapters. Other clinical chapters properly include relevant CT findings, for example, but there is also a separate chapter on how to read a head CT. Learners at every level of experience will find information presented in a compelling, approachable way. We hope readers find the text is easy to use, sufficiently detailed, and above all, practical.
This work also attempts to highlight what is new and advanced. Our practice is varied, so the topics across chapters are wide-ranging, covering everything from resuscitation to conversion disorders; from airway management to addiction. Many topics are familiar as core emergency medicine, such as stroke, trauma, and heart failure. Even these core topics are sure to include the latest recommendations and are framed around the best available evidence-based practices. Importantly, new topics are offered such as emergent complications of fertility treatment and management of emergencies in patients who have had bariatric surgery, to name just two examples. Each future edition will attempt to cover the novel emergencies that inevitably result from advancing medical practices and new patterns of disease. “New” information will ultimately become familiar and then be merged as the next generation of emergency situations arise and are highlighted in subsequent editions.
Fortunately, we were able to draw on the abundant talent in the specialty of emergency medicine to create this new work. We sought authors who possessed both content expertise and teaching excellence. They know what the readers want and what the learners need. The authors, collectively, are shining examples of the remarkable teachers in our field. We express deep gratitude and admiration for all who contributed. They understood the novel aims of this text and produced exciting chapters. We have benefited enormously by reading their chapters. It was a joy being their students.
We hope this text will be used by residents to learn and will be accessed by experienced clinicians to recall key information or gain new knowledge. We hope that master teachers will find the work useful for their seminars. The chapters can be efficiently read, perhaps preparing residents to engage in interactive sessions. The work is detailed enough to contain the critical information that must be known by practitioners in the field. All users will hopefully benefit from the authors’ creative and expert presentations.
Although a text cannot easily do what great teachers do, such as increase motivation, ensure reinforcement of key messages, test retention, and facilitate transference to clinical practice, we hope that this book will be a useful support for these goals. This work is presented in honor of both the teachers who can accomplish these aims, and the learners who, through their own perseverance and subsequent expertise, will so ably serve their patients.
James G. Adams, Erik D. Barton, Jamie Collings, Peter M.C. DeBlieux, Michael A. Gisondi, Eric S. Nadel
Contents
- Resuscitation Skills and Techniques
- Special Considerations in the Pediatric Patient
- Head and Neck Injuries
- Gastrointestinal Diseases
- Pulmonary Diseases
- Cardiac Diseases
- Vascular Diseases
- Injuries to Bones and Organs
- Neurologic Diseases
- Allergic, Inflammatory, and Autoimmune Disorders
- SGenitourinary and Renal Diseases
- Women's Health and Gynecologic Diseases
- Environmental Injuries
- Toxicologic Emergencies
- Bites, Stings, and Injuries from Animals
- Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders
- Infections
- Wounds and Skin Injuries
- Rashes
- Emergency Psychiatric Disorders
- Hematology and Oncology Management
- Leadership, Communication, and Administration
- Appendix 1: Evidence-Based Medicine
- Appendix 2: Antibiotic Recommendations for Empirical Treatment of Selected Infectious Diseases
Key Features
- Basic science coverage is just detailed enough so you can understand every problem quickly, without being overwhelmed.
- A focus on the most common differential diagnoses helps you to "think horses, not zebras."
- Clinical recommendations are founded upon sound evidentiary guidelines, wherever available, to assist you in implementing evidence-based practices.
- Brief, clear chapters, written to consistent, highly practical templates, enable you to get the knowledge you need as efficiently as you need it.
- Prominent text boxes emphasize priority actions, facts and formulas, documentation, patient teaching, and tips and tricks, so you can apply actionable information easily.
- More than 500 full-color clinical photographs let you see emergent conditions as they present in real life.
Website Features
- Web-only content! Two bonus chapters and two appendices are available only online!
- Bonus Chapter 1: Basic Emergency Ultrasound
- Bonus Chapter 2: Cardiac Emergency Ultrasound: Evaluating for Pericardial Effusion and Cardiac Activity
- Appendix 1: Evidence-Based Medicine
- Appendix 2: Antibiotic Recommendations for Empirical Treatment of Selected Infectious Diseases
- Consult the book from any computer at home, in your office, or at any practice location.
- Instantly locate the answers to your clinical questions via a simple search query.
- Quickly find out more about any bibliographical citation by linking to its MEDLINE abstract.
Product Details
- Hardcover: 2312 pages
- Publisher: Saunders; 1 Har/Psc edition (June 10, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416028722
- ISBN-13: 978-1416028727
List Price: $199.00