Episodes

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 media @empulsepodcast or at ucdavisem.com. Please subscribe and rate us on iTunes – it helps us reach mor...

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 Dr. Cherie Ginwalla, help define some terms and offer advice on how to best care for our dying pati...

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 at 30,000 feet!), and some of the challenges and rewards of choosing this career path. We have so muc...

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 chewing betel nut at 7-8 years old. What atypical places have you practiced in? Share your experiences with us on social me...

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 issues, such as housing instability, substance use, firearm violence, and human trafficking. In this ...

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 changed in the over one hundred years since the “Flexner Report”. Dr. Mike Gisondi, Vice Chair of Educati...

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 common cases he saw, and the challenges of austere medicine. Do you have a question for Dr. Rose? Or w...

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 to as “balance billing”. Drawing from his health policy background, Matt helps us understand balance ...

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 media, @empulsepodcast, or online at ucdavisem.com/em-pulse. Please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes! It help ...

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 physician, educator, and digital health and public health researcher, and is an avid social media user h...

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 practice. Have you been a provider during a mass casualty event? How has the experience affected you? S...

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 your social media brand. The conference is trending of social media – follow #WRSAEM19, @wrsaem19, ...

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 Scholarship with Dr. Steve Bird, and much, much more! The conference is trending of social media – foll...

Heartbeat: The Mind of an Airway Enthusiast We sit down with EM legend and airway guru, Dr. Rich Levitan. Dr. Levitan is a self-proclaimed airway enthusiast who has published extensively on laryngoscopes and airway management. He currently works clinically, mainly in rural, critical care access hospitals, and travels the country and the globe speaking and teaching courses on airway management. So how does Dr. Levitan approach the “difficult airway”? It starts with mindset. Send us your question...

“Hot” Off the Press: Infant Fever Rule – Episode 15 Talking about neonatal fever makes most people hot under the collar! Fortunately, PECARN is on the case. Their latest paper was just published TODAY in JAMA Peds: A Clinical Prediction Rule to Identify Febrile Infants 60 Days and Younger at Low Risk for Serious Bacterial Infections. In this month’s episode, we learn about some the challenges of having a febrile infant – from a mom’s perspective. Then we discuss when, why, and how to apply the l...

Treat others not as you want to be treated but as they want to be treated. Mai Lee, RN and Dan Colby join us to share some stories and talk about how culture can impact our care in the ED and what we can do about it. Let’s continue the conversation on social media @empulsepodcast or at ucdavisem.com. Host: Dr. Julia Magaña, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at UC Davis Guest: Dr. Daniel Colby, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine UC Davis Guest: Mai Lee, RN, UC Davis Em...

#Thisismylane– Episode 14 If you work in the ED, you’ve likely seen your fair share of victims of gun violence. Though mass shootings have brought this issue into the public eye, firearm violence has been a public issue in our country for decades. In this episode, you’ll hear some powerful stories from providers about their experiences with people killed and injured by firearms. Then, we talk with researcher and expert, Dr. Garen Wintemute, about trends he’s seen, and discuss how we, as physicia...

Bonus Episode: 2018 in Review Happy New Year! 2018 was a big year for us, thanks to all of you! Here we are, almost 365 days since publishing our first episode, so let’s take a moment to reflect on our first year. We’re closing in on 30,000 downloads and have listeners in all 50 states, 2 territories, and 94 countries. We’ve been featured by several local news outlets, and one of our favorite EM blogs, lifeinthefastlane.com. And we even won an eHealthcare Leadership award! Wow. We are so gratefu...

Last Stand in Santa Rosa Imagine you’re working a shift in the Emergency Department when a fast moving wildfire hits. What would you do if you found out your home was burning? Or your family was in danger? And how do you react when the Fire Department tells you they are making a last stand a block away from your hospital? This situation is all too real for many physicians and providers affected by devastating wildfires in California. In this episode, we follow the story of the 2017 Santa Rosa fi...

Camp Fire medicine What are the medical needs when your WHOLE town burns down? What is it like to walk into a shelter with over a thousand friends and family still missing? What if the evacuees you are caring for are your neighbors? The California wildfires have been huge part of our personal and professional lives at UC Davis. In this Heartbeat we spoke with an EM resident who volunteered at a shelter in Chico, CA. Dr. Molly Hallweaver discusses what she saw, treated, and learned taking care of...

Caring for kids in the ED can be challenging – they often can’t (or won’t) tell you what’s wrong or where it hurts; they may have trouble sitting still during an exam or procedure; and their screams put everyone on edge. But let’s think about it from their perspective. It must be pretty confusing and frightening at times. Did you ever have to go to the ED as a kid? Do you remember what it was like? We ask some kids to share their thoughts and experiences. Then we get some valuable tips from the ...

Heartbeat: The Price of Beauty As Emergency Physicians, we pride ourselves on recognizing and treating life-threatening conditions. But what if we’re missing important diagnoses and we don’t even know it? In this Heartbeat, we explore acute and chronic silicone syndromes, two potentially serious conditions caused by injecting liquid silicone into the body. Dr. Nick Gorton, previously featured on Episode 8: Don’t be a Jerk! and the LGBTQI, MD Heartbeat, joins us again with advice on how to diagno...

If you have ever worked in an ED, you have taken care of a homeless patient. In fact, you’ve probably taken care of many patients you didn’t even know were struggling with homelessness. As providers, we know these people well. They are often labeled “superusers” and, in addition to sometimes acting as their primary care physicians, we often find ourselves trying to sort out their myriad social issues. In this episode, we talk with a homeless patient, multiple ED providers, and expert Dr. Bisan S...

A cool tool. In this episode Dr. Nate Kuppermann (@nkuppermann) discusses another amazing article on the PECARN TBI decision rule just published in JAMA Network Open. The article, Effect of the Head Computed Tomography Choice Decision Aid in Parents of Children With Minor Head Trauma: A Cluster Randomized Trial, and this episode explores shared decision making in the ED and a cool tool we can use to aid this process. Send us your questions and continue the conversation on social media @empulsep...