Rural Emergency Medicine


It's been over 3 and half years seen I wrote my original Top Online Resources for Medical Students, and we have come a long way. While there are still some of the old-favourites hanging around, there are also a whole bunch of newcomers to the online sphere. 

So after initially writing a list at the start of medical school, I'm now writing one at the end. This is by no means a comprehensive list, rather a list of resources that I found particularly useful throughout my medical school life. Feel free to add you own top resources in the comments section below.

Please note the majority of resources included in this list are all freely available, however some more comprehensive options do exist that require payment/subscription. I also recommending checking what online resources are provided by your Medical School/Hospital.

General
LifeintheFastLane
Lifeinthefastlane (LITFL) is one of my all time favourite resources, and probably the one I've used most on a regular basis. LITFL is a blog targeted at sharing emergency medicine and critical care knowledge, yet it's whole library of posts offers up much more to the reader.

Due to it's awesomeness, I'm not going waste any more time apart from saying, Go Check It Out!

Global Medical Education Project
The Global Medical Education Project (covered in a previous post) is a repository of medical information, images, videos and questions. It is an interactive network allowing people to tag media, vote questions up and down and comment on work.

The NNT
An Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) website evaluating therapies and diagnostics. It is a useful resource to use to see an overview of the evidence behind different therapies and diagnostics. Cover a range of specialities from Cardiology through to Urology.

GuidelinesForMe
www.guidelinesforme.com
A database of guidelines collated from around the globe.

MDCalc
A medical calculator and equations website for clinical calculations, scores, equations, outcomes, mortality and risk stratifications.

SketchyMedicine
www.sketchymedicine.com
I'm a very visual learner and SketchyMedicine is one of the blogs I frequently stop by to have a look.
There are some great doodles that cover a number of aspects of medicine; everything from internal medicine through to basic anatomy.

Khan Academy
www.khanacademy.org
Khan Academy is a huge educational initiative comprising of 100s of videos. Best used for learning your basic sciences, or maybe just learning something new entirely.

You can also access their library on your mobile or tablet through the KhanApp.

Handwritten Tutorials 
www.handwrittentutorials.com
Simple. Handwritten video tutorials on basic physiology and anatomy. If you're a visual learner like me than these are high yield.

Lab Tests Online
http://www.labtestsonline.org.au/
Labs tests online helps the clinician understand clinical laboratory tests. It provides information on individual tests (e.g. eLFTs), on tests for diagnosing or asessing (e.g. Anaemia) and tests for certain population groups (e.g. neonates). It contains information that has been localised to more than 15 different countries (from Australia through to the United States of America).

Android and iPhone apps are also available.

Anatomy
BioDigital Human
https://www.biodigitalhuman.com/home/
The BioDigital Human is a virtual 3D body that brings to life thousands of medically accurate anatomy objects and health conditions in an interactive Web-based platform.

Zygote Body
http://www.zygotebody.com/
An offshoot of the original GoogleBody, Zygote body provides another 3D view of the human body.

AnatomyZone
http://www.anatomyzone.com/
AnatomyZone harnesses some of the above resources to create Anatomy tutorials useful to a wide range of different users, from nurses, to physiotherapists, to osteopaths, to medical students.

Clinical Examination
The Stanford Medicine 25
http://stanfordmedicine25.stanford.edu/the25
This website produced by Stanford covers 25 common clinical examinations. It includes the usual collection of text, images and videos.

GeekyMedics
http://geekymedics.com
A popular site amongst many medical students, GeekyMedics covers the basics of history taking and clinical examination in an easy and friendly way. Aside from their clinical examination posts, they also have a collection of posts relevant to OSCEs, Medicine, Surgery and Emergency.

There is also a clinical skills section on IVLine, which has a number of useful videos from the University of London.

Cardiology
ECGPedia
http://en.ecgpedia.org/
A free electrocardiography (ECG) tutorial and textbook to which anyone can contribute ,
pitched at medical professionals and keen medical students. Also includes a number of case studies.
If you're looking for a place to start in understanding ECG this is one I would recommend.

Profmontage
http://www.profmontage.com.au
ProfMontage provides a video tutorial series on clinical cardiology, cardiac physiology and clinical epidemiology. The videos are short and snappy (being all less than 3 minutes) and features a cast of characters from Xtranormal.

You may recognise the use of XtraNormal from this classic Orthopaedic vs Anaesthesia Battle.

LearntheHeart
http://www.learntheheart.com/
Learn the heart is a website highlighting some of the big ticket items in cardiology.

Blaufuss Multimedia
http://www.blaufuss.org/
Want to hear a heart murmur? Blaufuss Multimedia has a number of tutorials on hearts sounds, as well as ECG and arrhythmias.

CV Physiology
http://www.cvphysiology.com/Tutorials/tutorials.htm
Tutorials and quizzes on cardiovascular physiology; from arrhythmias through to peripheral artery disease.

Quick Guide to ECG
http://www.ivline.org/2010/05/quick-guide-to-ecg.html
The most popular post on IVLine, this post gets people coming back time and time again. It runs through the basics of ECG and provides a quick guide on how to report an ECG back to a colleague.

Emergency Medicine
Note emergency medicine is renowned for a having very active group of clinicians and students worldwide publishing content. While I would love to include everyone on this list, I resorted to selecting just a few of my regulars. If you wish to find more it's worth checking out #FOAMed on twitter which is where all the emergency physicians spend their days.

AcademicLifeinEM
http://academiclifeinem.com/
Academic Life in EM started by Michelle Lin (@M_Lin), provides a wealth of resources on Emergency Medicine topics. With consistently good content, this is not one to miss. My two personal picks from this site are; Tricks of Trade and her Paucis Verbis (PV) cards. The PV cards are available on iOS, Android, Evernote or Dropbox.

Patwari Academy
http://www.youtube.com/user/oldblueday
If you haven't realised by now, I'm a bit of a visual learner. Patwari Academy is a series of video tutorials on emergency medicine and evidence based practice by Rahul Patwari. The videos are broken down into digestible bits, with often a topic like Advance Life Support running over a number of videos.

EMCrit
http://emcrit.org/
Scott Weingart (@EMCrit) the author of EMCrit, too many feels like the god of Critical Care. Not surprisingly his blog is a gold mine. While I wouldn't recommend this blog to kids just kicking off their medical training, this is one for anyone passionate about critical care.

Anatomy for Emergency Medicine
http://emergencymedicineireland.com/anatomy-and-em/
Anatomy for Emergency Medicine is a podcast series which delivers doses of anatomical knowledge linked in with clinical scenarios. Often we learn anatomy simple as remember this goes here and does this. These podcasts series, ties our anatomical knowledge (or lack thereof) into the clinical scenarios some may face on a day to day basis.

Ultimate Guide to Trauma
http://www.ivline.org/2012/04/ultimate-guide-to-trauma.html
The Ultimate Guide to Trauma is a collection of posts from blogs like Lifeinthefastlane, Academic Life in EM, EMCrit and so on, which offers a starting point for those interested in understanding the approach to trauma in general and specific scenarios.

Histology/Pathology 
Blue Histology
http://www.lab.anhb.uwa.edu.au/mb140/
A collection of images, notes and quizzes from the University of Western Australia.

Shotgun Histology
http://www.youtube.com/user/WashingtonDeceit
Another long-standing favourite of medical students. Shotgun histology features selection of videos investigating the histology of different tissues. A highly valuable resource for those who have had no experience in histology. To watch in a series, view this playlist.

 

PathologyStudent
http://www.pathologystudent.com/
Pathology Student's motto is 'making pathology easy and fun. While I can't comment on the fun part (being not a huge fan of pathology) it certainly makes it a bit easier and in my opinion bearable. Pathology student is regularly updated and has some useful study guides.

Internal Medicine
Internal Medicine Introductory Lecture Series
http://www.uth.tmc.edu/schools/video/streamvideo/ms/im/imedls.html
A series of video lectures from the University of Texas on internal medicine topics.

Clinical Cases
http://clinicalcases.org/
Clinical Cases and Images is a useful resource that brings together various pearls of medical wisdom and aims to bridge the gap between clinical theory and practice. It is a well supported and recommended blog, having been featured in 14 peer-reviewed medical journals and other scientific publications.

General Practice
GPnotebook
http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/
GPnotebook is an online encyclopaedia of medicine pitched at general practitioners.

FamilyPractice Notebook
http://www.fpnotebook.com
Almost like the younger cousin of GPnotebook. Between the two you should be able to find what you are looking for.

Nephrology
Nephrology On-Demand
Nephrology on Demand from the University of Eastern Carolina is a regularly updated website, with pearls, histopathology, videos and general renal goodness.

Precious Bodily Fluids
http://www.pbfluids.com/
Handouts, powerpoints and a handful of blog posts since 2007, Precious Bodily Fluids is another a would recommend to get started with nephrology.

Neurology

Rather than do too much leg work, when I see a good resource I share it. Eve Purdy from Manu et Corde has put together a list of useful neurology resources.

Draw it to know it

http://www.drawittoknowit.com
Not exactly free (except for a free trial) and not strictly neurology, Draw it to know it is a site that gets you to draw neuroanatomy to remember it. I include it here, as I've found it useful at times; for both myself and students I've taught neuroanatomy too.

Ophthalmology
OphthoBook
http://www.ophthobook.com/
OphthoBook is what I would call the simple guide to Ophthalmology. In fact, for medical students I would probably just call it the complete guide. Written by Dr Tim Root, it contains some funky cartoon images, videos galore and all the basics you need to know about Ophthalmology.

The Eyes Have It
http://www.kellogg.umich.edu/theeyeshaveit/
An tutorial and quiz website provided by the University of Michigan. Though I like to think of it as an atlas with some questions. Best of all if you're looking to share all their content is licensed under creative commons.
IVLine: Clinical Examination of the Eye

Orthopaedics
AO Surgery
https://www.aofoundation.org/wps/portal/surgery
The AO Surgery Reference is a huge online repository of surgical knowledge, consisting of more than 7000 pages. It overviews surgical procedures, surgical decision making, and has an abundance of images and videos Simply select an area of anatomy then work through Diagnosis, Indication, Preparation, Approach, Reduction & Fixation and Aftercare.

Plus it can be accessed on you smartphone or tablet.

WorldOrtho
http://www.worldortho.com/
WorldOrtho is a site dedicated to Orthopaedic resources and learning. The Simple Guide to Orthopaedics and the Simple Guide to Trauma are two useful ebooks.

Videos by Dr Nabil Ebraheim
http://www.youtube.com/user/nabilebraheim/videos
Videos on anatomy, signs and symptoms. Plus a few of the common rheumatological and orthopaedic conditions.

Wheeless' Textbook of Orthopaedics
http://www.wheelessonline.com
To be honest I'm really not a fan of this site, but it gets recommended to me so often I've included it here. I'm sure the information is actually pretty good, but the layout and design, just make we want to stay well clear of this site.

Paediatrics
Royal Childrens Hospital (Melbourne)
http://www.rch.org.au/clinicalguide/
A complete suite of clinical practice guidelines and tips developed by a team of paediatricians. Updated frequently and available on your mobile devices.

Pediatric Surgery Handbook
http://med.brown.edu/pedisurg/Handbook.html
A quick and easy guide on the basics of Paediatric Surgery provided by Brown University.

There are a collection of paediatric resources available at www.generalpediatrics.com

Radiology
Radiopaedia
http://radiopaedia.org/
A huge encyclopaedia of radiology knowledge. It has over 13000 cases, nearly 6000 articles which continues to all the time. Nearly anyone can be part of it, and it can accessed through their dedicated mobile apps.

Radiology Masterclass
http://www.radiologymasterclass.co.uk/
Whereas Radiopaedia feels like a reference site or wiki to all radiological knowledge, Radiology Masterclass has a structured tutorial breakdown. This allows you to work step-by-step through areas of firstly interest (e.g. by anatomy) followed by skill level.

Rural Practice
Rural Doctors
http://ruraldoctors.net/
This site is for clinicians who want to keep in touch with the latest in medical education concepts applicable to rural practice, listen to relevant podcasts and share thoughts on typical cases, using info from the wider medical education community.

Surgery
SurgWiki.com
http://surgwiki.com/
Surgwiki is brought to you by the ANZ Journal of Surgery and has a number of contributors and editors from across the globe. It is broken down into four main components; General concepts, Surgical technique, Peri-operative care and Specialty interests.

Subscription Services
Here are some paid services I particularly like.
  • BMJ Best Practice
  • MDConsult
  • AccessMedicine

I used to be a fan of Uptodate however it's not as useful to an Australian practitioner. In addition, BMJ Best Practice provides a great iPad App.

Summary
So that's a wrap-up of some of the resources I found most useful during my medical degree. I have obviously not had the chance to do every speciality throughout my years of training. And a few of the resources have obviously been due to their relevance to the Australian practitioner.

So I encourage everyone to share of their favourite below in the comments section or on twitter under #FOAMed.

Photo Atrribution
  • Studying by Saad Faruque

No comments:

Post a Comment