EM Pulse Podcast™

This month’s Heartbeat is about something most of never get enough of: SLEEP. Dr. Katren Tyler, emergency physician and Vice Chair of Wellness for the UC Davis Department of Emergency Medicine, shares some important information about sleep and shift work. Katren recently spoke on this topic at the UC Davis EM Winter Conference in Lake Tahoe. She explains how our sleep patterns change throughout ou...

If you’ve ever watched a patient, friend, or family member have a seizure, you know how scary and stressful it can be for everyone involved. It’s even more stressful when you can’t get the seizure to stop – this is called status epilepticus. Usually, benzodiazepines are our first line medication. If benzos don’t work, we all have our favorite second, and even third line agents to try to brea...

Happy National Women Physicians Day and National Wear Red Day, promoting awareness of heart disease in women! In this month’s Heartbeat, we have the privilege of speaking with the brilliant and visionary Dr. Alyson McGregor. Dr. McGregor is an emergency physician who specializes in sex and gender emergency medicine. She spoke with us about heart disease – the number one killer of women in th...

Happy 2020! Well, that’s a wrap on another year of EM Pulse. Our podcast continues to grow, as does our audience. We published another 25 new episodes this year and now have listeners in 114 countries around the world! We also did our first live podcast from the Western Regional SAEM Conference. There are more exciting things to come this year! In 2020, we are kicking off our Advisory Panel, a gro...

Welcome back and happy new year! If you are an EM or peds provider you likely know the name PECARN (Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network).  This powerhouse was the first federally funded pediatric emergency medicine research network in the US and generates quality studies like nobody’s business.  We have reviewed three landmark PECARN studies: Hot off the Press infant fever...

Global health can be an amazing adventure or an unsettling disappointment. We can make a big difference in the lives of people around the world or drain local resources and have a feel good vacation. In this episode we hear meaningful international impact stories and from global health experts on how we can make a meaningful impact as well. Have you worked internationally? Send us your story &#821...

Last month we explored leveraging tech for life long learning. In this heartbeat we discuss tech as a teaching tool with Dr. Emily Andrada, an amazing teacher who has mastered using technology for teaching. Hear about the ups and downs of using technology for education, Emily’s favorite tools, and a new resource available on www.ucdavisem.com – Unschooling Time . What is your favorite tech t...

The amount of information we are expected to learn in medical school, residency, and beyond can be overwhelming – like drinking from a firehose! In this episode, we explore some ways in which physicians can leverage technology to help manage all of this information and facilitate life long learning. Several residents and attendings discuss what works for them, including using apps and online...

In this heartbeat we do something a little different. We discuss the story behind EM Pulse and three lessons we learned in our creative pursuit. These three lessons can be applied to other creative pursuits as well. We would love to hear how you express your passion and what you have learned as well! Let’s continue the conversation on social media @empulsepodcast or at ucdavisem.com . Please subsc...

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis that impacts our patients, our hospitals, the health care system, and our daily work in the emergency department. It is easy to be caught up in own experience, or the problems of our own department. But when we look beyond our hospital, we see that this is a huge crisis at county, state, and national levels. To help us understand why we are in this sit...

High sensitivity troponins are taking over the nation are you ready? Dr. Bryn Mumma is ready and in this heartbeat she shares what we need to know to be ready!  Are you using high sensitivity troponins? How is it going? Let’s continue the conversation on social media @empulsepodcast or at ucdavisem.com . Please subscribe and rate us on iTunes – it helps us reach more people!  Host: Dr. J...

There is an epidemic of poverty in America, and we see it firsthand in the ED. Dr. Donna Beegle has dedicated her life to studying this epidemic, and training others to help break the cycle of poverty. She shares her own personal story of growing up in generational poverty, then helps us understand the scope of poverty in the U.S., and how it affects health. UC Davis Emergency Medicine NP, Danise...

Physician wellness is not JUST about going to a yoga class or two. In this episode we explore physician wellness from the perspective of the EM Chair of Stanford University.  On the personal level we should jump in and check on each other, help each other out! Make sure your leadership knows physician wellness is crucial to providing care 24/7/365. Let’s continue the conversation on social me...

In Emergency Medicine, we are all too familiar with death and dying, but how equipped are we really to provide compassionate end of life care? Dr. Conor Mcwade shares his experience caring for a patient with end stage cancer, and the challenges of respecting the patient’s wishes, even when the family wanted to pursue aggressive measures. Then, palliative care trained physicians, Dr. Rupi Chima and...

What is military emergency medicine all about? Many of us know physicians who are in the US Armed Forces, but few of us really know what that really entails. Dr. Rod Fontenette is an Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Physician at UC Davis and a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force. He joins us to talk about Military EM, including training, emergency and critical care on the front lines (and a...

Hafa adai! Or “Hello” in Chamorro , the native language of Guam . I just got back from the US territory of Guam and loved working in such a beautiful place with it’s own set of unique challenges. We spoke with local emergency medicine physician Gabriel David to hear about practicing in an isolated island where many can’t or don’t seek medical care until really ill, and start chewi...

If you work in Emergency Medicine, you know that social and environmental factors greatly impact our patients’ health. This may not be a novel concept, but it is a relatively new field of study. Social Emergency Medicine is a growing branch of EM focused on identifying and studying how social factors affect health. We are especially interested in this topic as many of our episodes explore social i...

How do we teach our medical students and residents to be doctors? Surprisingly, there is no agreed upon, standard approach. Dr. Aaron Danielson, fellowship trained medical educator at UC Davis, takes us through some of the common strategies that medical schools employ. He explains that, although many aspects of medical education have evolved over the past several decades, some things haven’t chang...

What’s the craziest place you’ve ever worked? Few of us can top Dr. John Rose’s answer: the South Pole! John worked as the physician at Amundsen-Scott Station in Antarctica for four months during the austral summer of 2018-19. Taking care of a large crew of scientists and visitors in -70 degree weather at over 10,000 ft elevation is no easy feat! John tells us about his deployment, some of the com...

Dr. Matt Wetschler’s story represents the best and the worst of our healthcare system. Matt tells us about his near fatal injury, his miraculous recovery (thanks to modern medicine), and the complications with billing that plagued him for months after his accident. Matt’s story is one of several in the recent media highlighting the issue of “surprise billing”, and a subset of this issue referred t...

Measles is a hot topic from your latest shift to the news measles is on everyone’s mind! Fortunately, Dr. Dean Blumberg an infectious disease physician and fellow podcast host walks us through the basics of measles from the standpoint of the emergency department.   Which patients do you screen for measles?  Have you seen any confirmed cases?  Share your thoughts with us on social me...

In our January episode, #thisisourlane , we spoke with Dr. Garen Wintemute about firearm violence, and discussed the immediate and passionate social media outpouring from physicians in response to an NRA tweet. In this episode, we dive deeper into the topic of physician advocacy, and, more specifically, the role of social media in advocacy. Our guest, Dr. Megan Ranney , is an emergency medicine ph...

What is it like to be an Emergency Physician in the ED during a mass shooting? Dr. Austin Johnson was a senior resident at the University of Colorado Hospital on the night a gunman opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shares his firsthand experience as a physician in the ED that night, and discusses the effects of the event on providers, and how the experience has shaped his prac...

EM Pulse Live Edition: WR SAEM Day 2 Wrap-up It was another exciting day at the Western Regional SAEM conference in Napa, CA! This episode recaps Day 2, including the Western EM Challenge and some fantastic plenary speakers. Highlights include time management for EM physicians, social emergency medicine, care for LGBTQI patients, the future of medical education, exercise in medicine, and building...

This is a first for us! We’re podcasting live (or nearly live) from the 2019 Western Regional Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting in Napa, California. In this episode, we re-cap Day 1 of the conference, featuring the Advanced Airway Lab with Dr. Erik Laurin, Wellness in Academic EM with Dr. Andra Blomkalns, Experience in a Mass Shooting with Dr. Austin Johnson, The Value of Scho...