Medical School for Everyone: Emergency Medicine

Start by learning about the first critical step of emergency care: triage. When faced with a waiting room full of patients, how does a capable emergency department doctor decide whom to treat first? What happens when a patient's condition changes? Or when more patients show up?

Welcome to the night shift at an emergency department, where anything can happen. Through the patient cases here, you'll get a deeper understanding of how emergency doctors think twice about a young man having a heart attack, a college student who is vomiting, and an elderly man who is having trouble walking.

Discover how emergency doctors use OLD CAAAR: a simple mnemonic to accurately - and quickly - pinpoint the location and characteristics of a patient's pains. Also, learn what happens when a doctor has to think fast and doesn't have the time to ask each of the OLD CAAAR questions.

Take a closer look at three emergency department cases - a urinary tract infection, a broken leg, and a bellyache - with a twist. How were these diagnoses determined? Not through expensive tests or advanced imaging, but through paying attention to the story, even when it isn't truthful.

According to Dr. Benaroch, to best treat a patient, you sometimes have to treat the patient's family. See this principle in action through a 16-year-old complaining of chronic bronchitis and a 60-year-old found unresponsive with low blood sugar - both of whom have families to help support a doctor's efforts to diagnose and heal.

Focus on patients with chest pain, which might be either a sign of a mild illness or an actual heart attack. Why is it so difficult to identify every serious cause of chest pain? What questions should doctors - and patients¬ - ask? What's the difference between myocarditis, pneumothorax, and other medically serious cases?