
Although I ‘love’ jellyfish from the point of view of a clinician, I avoid getting close and personal’ with them. Recently I plunged face first into a jellyfish
Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
Emergency Medicine education blog

Although I ‘love’ jellyfish from the point of view of a clinician, I avoid getting close and personal’ with them. Recently I plunged face first into a jellyfish
A poem from ‘Playing God’ by New Zealand doctor Glenn Colquhoun:
‘When I am in doubt I talk to surgeons.
I know that they will know what to do.
They seem so sure….’

The waiting room can be an amazing source of inspiration, and the Utopian College of Emergency Medicine embraces those that rise to the challenge of being creative during this period of reflection, contemplation and sheer boredom.

Spaces of waiting exist in each of our lives, sometimes quite literally (a doctor’s office, the ER), while at other times, they exist only in the abstract (waiting for a better time to come, for happiness, or love). The Waiting Room hovers somewhere between the concrete and the ephemera. Using the conventions and aesthetics of waiting rooms, I’ve created a space that is simultaneously real and unreal; a meditation on, and exploration of, time, waiting, and fate.

An 87 year old female presented with a subarachnoid haemorrhage. GCS 8/15. A nasogastric tube was unable to be placed due to patient agitation. As a consequence, the patient was fasted for five days due to concern about swallowing. Subsequently, an arterial blood gas was obtained:

I first became aware that redheads were treated differently in medicine when I started hanging around anaesthetists. Most anaesthetists i know tend to get slightly more uptight when they see the phaeomelanin-laden locks of a freckled UV-sensitive patient. Especially in obstetrics. Why is this you ask?

In a bid to comply with the 4 second rule, the UCEM is proud to announce its official guide to personality disorders to facilitate quick Psychiatric referrals from the waiting room.

A 38 year old male with a background history of type 2 diabetes presents with fevers, rigors and pain on swallowing. There is no sign of impending airway compromise; however, marked trismus is noted. The following plain X-ray is obtained:
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