The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Image Credit: Pexels

Author: MohammedMoiz Qureshi, MD
AAEM/RSA President
Originally published: Common Sense March/April 2019

As of January 1, 2019, current second year residents in three year programs have officially completed half their residency! Just under 18 months away from completing a long and grueling journey. It’s remarkable how much you grow from a fourth year med student to a semi-competent senior resident in the ED. As we look forward to the second half and start looking at the next stage in our careers there is an overwhelming feeling of unease in terms of where to begin the “grown-up” job search and what to assess and prioritize.

A Life Almost Saved

Image Credit: Common Sense

Author: Nick Pettit, DO PhD
Originally published: Common Sense January/February 2019

Very few jobs, let alone, medical specialties have the potential to encounter death on a daily basis. With this comes responsibility, honor, reward, pride, but also despair, death, and failure. Politics and biases aside, as clinicians, it is engrained early in our training that we are present to aid, cure, educate, and comfort the patient. The patient is the focus of everything, patient satisfaction, outcomes, money, litigation, politics, and this is so true when we as a health care team almost save a life. Imagine Billy, a 12 year old boy riding his bicycle on a sidewalk and is struck by a drunk driver. EMS arrives and finds a child as a GCS 3. Intubated and sent to local ED, where thorough radiographic imaging demonstrates diffuse axonal injury, possible cervical spine injury, bilateral hemopneumothoraces, etc., and clinically has experienced a nonsurvivable event. After being admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit, and after numerous consultations with subspecialists, the parents do the most heroic thing of all and consent to organ donation.

Three vs. Four and Everything in Between

Image Credit: Pexels

Author: MohammedMoiz Qureshi, MD
AAEM/RSA President
Originally published: Common Sense January/February 2019

As interview and rank season comes to an end and the ever-anticipated Match is just a few short months away, I thought it would be a good time to reach out to our medical students who have questions and concerns regarding the variations in residency training programs. Emergency medicine programs are abundant nationwide and vary in length between three and four years. Students are often confused whether the extra year makes a difference in overall training or ability to pass board certification and it remains one of the most commonly asked questions on the interview trail.