Posts about Emergency Medicine
Early in my career, I encountered a patient with severe renal colic who also had a history of opioid use disorder, now with several years of sobriety. Our initial treatment options with the usual non-narcotic medications and IV fluids had offered some initial relief, but his pain had returned with a vengeance. His battle with opioids had been hard fought, and he was adamant that he would only resort to opioids if we had exhausted every...
At Hippo, we make choices big and small based on our mission: to empower the people of medicine to learn, grow, and thrive through education and community. As emergency medicine and EM education continue to evolve, we’ve been asking ourselves some important questions:
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Managing a cardiac arrest is the paramount skill of an emergency medicine physician. The process is a furious loop of assessments, actions, and decisions. Choices are often made with minimal information to fall back on, and delays of mere seconds can define the outcome. When running the rapid mental checklist of Hs and Ts, the decision to give or withhold thrombolytics is one that is often made amidst a fog of uncertainty. And while the...
Bedside ultrasound has become a common tool in many EDs. Potentially one of the most important uses of ultrasound is during resuscitation. When a patient is crashing and every moment counts, having the ability to quickly assess the clinical situation and make critical decisions is paramount.
It’s 2 a.m., and you’ve got a 28‑year‑old with signs of meningitis: fever, neck stiffness, altered mentation. You prep for the usual midline lumbar puncture, but the patient is obese, and you can’t clearly palpate the landmarks. The first stick goes bone‑deep, and there’s no CSF. Your frustration builds. The patient shifts; you adjust, but there is still no flow! What are you going to do next?
“My dermatologist sent me to the ER for my blood pressure, and they told me I’m going to have a stroke.”
Opioid overdoses have become an unavoidable part of our daily shifts in the ED. It is a tragic commonality that transcends social and economic lines. It would be a safe bet that if you are reading this, you likely have a friend, family member, or colleague whose life has been disrupted by opioid abuse.
The population is aging fast, and clinicians are feeling the impact. By 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be over 65, and older adults already represent the highest healthcare utilization of any age group. Yet fewer than 45% of medical schools have a required geriatrics rotation, leaving most of us to piece together our knowledge on the fly.
Aesthetic surgery is booming. Data from the last year show a 14% increase in total procedures, driven largely by a 23% rise in nonsurgical interventions and dramatic gains in body contouring. Liposuction procedures increased by 63%, abdominoplasty by 55%, and overall U.S. spending on aesthetics exceeded $11.8 billion, up 2% from the previous year.
“It all started a few days after I got back from my trip.”
In the emergency department, we’re trained to act quickly on clear, testable diagnoses—STEMI, stroke, sepsis. But every day, we also see patients whose stories don’t fit neatly into a protocol. Their test results may look "normal," but their lived experience is anything but.
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