First Year Masters in Emergency Medicine Survival Guide

I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome you all to our Masters programme in Emergency Medicine. I’m sure most of you are feeling overwhelmed, confused and would appreciate some guidance into the year, as I did when I first enrolled. Thus, I have jotted down tips I have acquired and come to know over the whole year, (most times learnt the difficult way).

The following are topics you must know INSIDE-OUT. These topics have a 100% probability of coming out in one exam or another:

Physiology

Cardiovascular Physiology Respiratory Physiology Acid-base Fluids and blood products

 Pathophysiology

Types of shock, Classes of shock Acute coronary syndrome Asthma/COPD

 Pharmacology

In pharmacology you need to know the indications, contraindications, presentations, mechanism of actions, routes and dosages, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics of the drug. Don’t worry, these can be found in Martin and Sasada.

The important pharmacology topics are:

Inotropeso Dopamineo Dobutamineo Adrenalineo Noradrenaline

Neuromuscular Blockerso Suxamethoniumo Atracuriumo Vecuroniumo Rocuronium

Induction Agentso Midazolamo Propofolo Ketamineo Etomidate

Opiateso Morphineo Fentanylo Pethidine

Anatomy

Anatomy of the airway Anatomy of the endotracheal tube, laryngeal mask airway, laryngoscope

 Skills

Rapid Sequence Induction

Airway management – oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal, intubation

OthersAdvanced Cardiology Life Support (ACLS)Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Emergency Medicine course is structured in such a way that the knowledge you need to know above is ABSOLUTELY essential for work in the Emergency Department. Recommended TextbooksPhysiology

Vander’s Costanzo Guyton Kerry Brandis

 Pharmacology Pathophysiology

Martin Sasada Rang & Dale Ganong

Clinical

Sarawak Handbook Frank Shan Tintinalli

Absolutely ESSENTIAL textbooks:

Kerry Brandis

Martin Sasada

Tintinally

 Tips and Tricks

Use your time in the anaesthesia posting to learn as much as you can about induction agents, paralytic agents and physiology (anaesthetists are generally experts on physiology!). This is also the time to acquire skills, for example, in intubation.

Make full use of the generally more laid-back time (shyyy, don’t tell Prof!) in anaesthesia to study for the Part 1 exams! You are guaranteed to be much more busy and tired (therefore less quality time studying), when doing the Emergency Medicine posting.

Make sure you attend ALL of Dr Idzwan’s teachings.

Having a camera is recommended for taking pictures of ECGs, Xrays, patients (get consent first). Every time you encounter interesting cases, take notes and pictures of them. It is always good to have a collection of these for M&M meetings.

Emergency medicine is teamwork and best results are usually achieved through politeness and respect for your colleagues, nursing staff and people from other departments. It is never wrong to support and help each other in clinical work as well as in academic. Most importantly, enjoy yourself!

From the beginning of each of your postings, be on the look-out for interesting cases and keep the patient sticker labels. You need to do 2 case write-ups for each of your posting for submission.

Logbook Throughout your 4 years, keep a logbook of procedures that you have done e.g. intubation, central line insertions, wound closure and suturing, chest drains. Keep the patient’s sticker

label every time you do any procedures and stick it into your logbook. Record the date, the type of procedure and the indication of the procedure in your logbook. Recommended free softwares

Firefox browser, with Scrapbook add-on installed (great for saving web pages for offline viewing)

Evernote (keep and view notes anywhere and it syncs with your computer)

Fox-it PDF (much much better and faster than Acrobat Reader!)

Some of the recommended textbooks above are available in electronic format (ask us if you would like them)