The CHEP Guidelines

This app was being promoted at FMF this year. It's one stop shopping for all your hypertension management needs based on the latest guidelines. No one wants to hear another lecture on treating hypertension. This app gives us the update without the watered down coffee.


It includes what your targets are for different co-morbities.


And helpful tables based on evidence.


It's a logical, fairly easy to use app.

And it's free. Download it. Now.

For iPhone, iTouch and iPad.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Editions for iPad

Ok, not a med app, but still med relevant.


This is a "magazine" put together by AOL from the parameters you give them. Each article has a heading that allows you to choose more or less of the content.


It's only available on iPad, not the phone or touch, and takes a few minutes to load your magazine. It's supposed to archive the information for you to look at later off line but I've yet to have that work well.It does include a lot of the stuff that my patients come in to ask me a out. E.g. "is the TLC diet any good?". Without my Editions, I wouldn't have even known it existed. And it's a great way to catch up on celebrity gossip - Katy and Russell are splitting? Not surprising, but still upsetting.


And, best of all, it's free.- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Reach MD

It's time I started reviewing some apps again. Before Christmas I bought an iPad and went a bit nuts increasing my library of medical app library to justify having it for work.


Reach MD requires you to be connected to the Internet. It's an archive of radio shows broadcast on satellite that is aimed at physicians. Most of the shows are about 13 minutes long but some are longer. There are many specialties featured in the archive - paediatrics to geriatrics.


Checking out what everyone else is listening to is a good start. The shows feature experts talking about how they approach clinical problems. You get expert opinion as well as reviews of literature.

Because the shows are nice and short they keep my tiny attention. Some problems with the archive though - updates are infrequent. The last new shows I saw were a month ago. The shows are sponsored by pharma so you have to take what is being said with a grain of salt.

Check it out though, it's free.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Apps and PodCasts for CaRMS

It seems like most of the random traffic I get to my blog comes from those looking for info on CaRMS, especially those wondering what will happen if they don't match. This post is for you guys. It's intended for the CaRMS tour, but if I wait until then to post it you won't be able to procrastinate now from writing personal letters.

Pod Casts can be a wonderful way of getting ready to speak with interviewers before you head in. The speakers are using doctor words eloquently and may bring up points that are interesting to you and could inspire a tangential chat between you and your interviewer. They can help you pass the time while waiting outside the interview room and since they require headphones, ensure the other candidates won't freak you out. To be honest, I just had a graphic novel with me that I read while waiting. That kept other candidates far away from me because they figured I was a weirdo.

White Coat Black Art is a fantastic pod cast that often gets at the things that we often think about but rarely talk about, in particular the errors that get made in medicine and how we deal with them and with our patients. These are downloadable from the CBC website or through iTunes.

You can also download the app ReachMD for free. This contains a large selection of pod casts ranging from short 10 minute clips to 3 part lectures that are over an hour long. They have a table of contents based on CME, programming series, specialties (you name it, it's there), Listener's favourites, new programming this week. It's an American radio station on XM satellite but they often have Canadian content experts speaking. This may give you an idea of some of the current topics in the specialty you are applying to that you hadn't thought of yet.

Bump is kind of awesome and fun. It's a way to share data between iPhone users. All I use it for is contacts but it has function for photos, apps, music, calendar and social networks. When you are on tour, you'll be meeting some fantastic people you will want to keep in touch with. Bump lets you share your contact information quickly by bumping your 2 phones together so you can text and meet for a beer after interviews. These are your future colleagues, not your enemies, get to know them. Free app!

Starbucks will be in every city you are applying to. Knowing how to get your coffee in the morning or find a place to chill out the night before will make you a much happier applicant. This app has a mapping feature that will help you find directions to the nearest store and includes valuable information such as hours, if they have wireless, if they're drive through and if they will warm your apple fritter for you. Also free!

There will be times when you are preparing for an interview that you want to know some specific information about the city you are applying to. WolframAlpha is the multi trivia app for you. If you ask about the population of the city in question, it has that info plus graphs on the growth of the city in the past 20 years. It will tell you what is nearby to avoid geographical errors in interviews and allows you to compare to other cities. It also has a scientific calculator, information on weather, people and history, music, words and linguistics, information on the local athletic teams. Everything you could possibly want to know to schmooze with the interviewers. $1.99

You want to have your personal letters and CVs with you at all times on the CaRMS tour. It's likely that at some point you will leave the stack of paper in your car or hotel or at home. Emailing it to yourself is a brilliant idea, but what if you can't get access to the internet in the dungeon the interviews are being held in? Am I the only one who plays out these disaster scenarios in my head? I uploaded all my info to Office2Plus. It lets me keep local files on my phone, create word documents there too while I'm feeling creative and connect with my GoogleDocs Cloud folder. You can keep everything in folders that work best for you. The ability to organize everything and the fact that it mimics my PC make me like this app most of all. The original app is free, but you need to purchase within the app for the kinds of files you are using.

The night before your first interview and your interview at your number one school can be brutal for sleep - relaxation is not going to happen. Still, try Andrew Johnson's Relax. This

is a guided relaxation that can make you feel rested. I love his accent. I used this during clerkship too when I had 20 minutes until handover and didn't get any sleep. It helped keep my going just a little bit longer. There's a free version, not sure about that one, but the one for $2.99 lets you choose if you want to wake up or go to sleep at the end of the relaxation time and has different options for the relaxation itself. If I'm extra wired, I go through the meat of the guide 2x.

xkcd has an app. This will keep your humour high during interviews. These are brilliant comics! omg it's free!

Need to put your life into perspective? FML (f my life) has stories of teenage woe that are rarely worth the curse in the title (free). I prefer TFLN (texts from last night), a series of texts that were sent that likely should not have been, more often than not under the influence of alcohol. This one is $0.99 and infinitely entertaining.

Quizzy Apps

These are apps that I use when I'm bored of reading, when I'm still asleep and know I need to study something or when I'm passing time waiting for something exciting to happen. Great for those with attention issues like me.

Surgical Pimpapalooza

I love this app. The questions I was asked during surgery are the questions that I'd reviewed with the app the night before. The app has been updated so it's even better now - you can save your favourites to review. Favourites is a funny way to put it. More like the ones I screwed up the first time round.

It includes Basic Science (hematology, wound healing, infection, stats, etc.) and Clinical Science (Gen surg topics including breast and endo, head and neck, vascular, gyne, trauma).

The questions are relevant and worth knowing the answers to, e.g. " Indications for splenectomy in a pt with a splenic injury" " Patients with multiple associated injuries (neuro injuries), unstable or in DIC".

So awesome. So worth...

Price: $5.99

iMCQs in Dermatology

This app makes me feel dumb. Every time I think I know what I'm doing in derm, I mess with this app and learn that I'm wrong. I have so much to learn about derm.

The quizzes are set up according to categories, eczema, general, hair, infections etc. Choose your subjects to review and go to it. You are shown a photo and asked for the diagnosis, etiology or treatment. The app has been updated so that you are shown the correct answer and the rationale. Before the update it just said whether or not you have the right answer. That was just ridiculous. You can also ask for hints so you know what you are looking for in the photo.

This is much better.

Sometimes the photos are a bit tiny on my iPhone but you can expand them. This would be a fantastic app on the iPad.

well worth:

Price: $2.99

(looking up this price, I see that this is a series; physiology, general medicine, general surgery, biochemistry and pain medicine)

Emergency Medicine Secrets

Like other quiz apps, this one is set up according to systems, nontraumatic complaints, decsion making etc. Within each category are subcategories that you can choose from to get review questions.

For example: "What are the causes of abdominal pain that are gastric or duodenal in origin?" " An estimated 10% of cases of abdominal pain seen in the ED are due to gastric or duodenal disease. Gastritis and peptic ulcer disease (PUD; ulcer of the stomach or duodenum resulting from gastric acid) account for most patients with abdominal pain secondary to gastric of duodenal disease. Perforated PUD and gastric volvulus are the two most serious conditions requiring immediate diagnosis and treatment."

Remember when I said I had issues with my attention span? Yikes. These answers are pretty long. And they're for emerg docs - well known for their ADHD.

It's true that they are also well known for being afraid of being sued. Maybe this is a consequence of that.

There are also 100 Top Secrets: e.g. "A foreign body in the airway should be suspected in a child with sudden onset of respiratory symptoms and lack of response to appropriate treatment."

I'm a little indifferent about this app. The reading required is just a little bit less than what I do in my text books but without the handy index. It's an app version of the paper book. Not sure it's worth the

Price: $49.99

Studying while doing the dishes

Wrapping up 4 years of medicine is busy. Every time I turn around, there's something else that needs to be done, someone that requires a document that I had in first year, somewhere I need to be.

I've been listening to pod casts of med review while doing household tasks and driving. So much easier than that pesky reading.

Pedcases and Surgery 101 are through U of A in Edmonton. MedPod is fun as well, if rather racist at times. They were helpful in clerkship and I'm enjoying them now. I remember bits of the dialogue when I'm trying to remember facts.

All the podcasts have material on their sites that can be useful for studying. Pedcases in particular has quite a few cases to learn from.

Worth checking out. And makes it possible to study while doing housework. Because that's fun.

More med apps I like

iMurmur 2:
"Your Guide to Heart Sounds". Offers a reference to review the heart sounds you can expect to hear when patients present with specific conditions. The sounds are subtle, like in real life, and to my naive ear, sound realistic. It tells you where to expect to hear the murmur best and at what point in the cardiac cycle. You need to use it with your headphones for best effects. Descriptions of the pathophysiology are included. It's been useful when preparing for my OSCE and trying to remember what kind of murmur I should be looking for with specific conditions. I will never be an expert murmur hunter so it's nice to know that I have this to help me determine what I'm hearing when listening to a patient's heart.

Easily worth the:$4.99

General Medical History
This was a goofy app. I must have been desperate when I downloaded it. It starts with "Greet patient: shake hands and eye contact".
Really?
Shocking.

There are some basic ROS questions that I sometimes forget but I haven't used this since my first week on CTU. I actually forgot it was on my iPhone.

But, it's free.

PALS Advisor:
Pediatric Advanced Life Support, for dummies.
Pick the problem in front of you. Neonatal Resusc? Got it. Brady or Tachy? Asthma? Tox? Anaphylaxis?
All there for you

Then it walks you through the steps to get the kiddo back from the white light. It provides you with a series of algorithms to help you make the choices you need to make until the child returns to a state where it can be left with just the Peds Nurse.

It's fun to work through scenarios on my own then compare them to what the PALS advisor would do. The format is incredibly user friendly and every scenario I've wanted to play with has been available.

if you plan on doing pediatrics, family or emergency medicine, worth the $4.99

Physical Exam Essentials
The history with this app is a bit more helpful than the one mentioned above.

For each aspect of the physical exam, the app goes through the general principles, clinical correlate, special tests and presentation tips. It also includes relevant photos.

My favourite "general principle" suggestion is in the breast and axillae section:
"Avoid using words that may be misinterpreted as inappropriate such as 'looks great' or 'looks nice'. ..."

Really?

Anyway...

This app does cover most of the exams I needed to perform during clerkship (if not all). It includes the following categories: hx, general survey, skin and nails, HEENT, thorax and lungs, breast and axillae, CVS, PVS, abdo, male genitalia and anus, same for female, mental status exam, cranial nerves, neuro.

more than worth the $2.99

more apps I'm using in clerkship

As far as organizational apps I've added, my favourite are calengoo and toodledo, but not just for their fun names.

CalenGoo:
Made to sync with your google calendar. I use this instead of the native calendar because I love my google calendar. You can set it up to text you before appointments, colour coordinate different aspects of your life, set up repeating appointments. Information is stored so you can access it off line, sync when you have an internet connection. There is an option for including details of your events. I usually cut and paste the information from emails into this space, e.g. 'don't forget to bring your midterm evaluations to this teaching session'. There are many more features, these are the ones I like most. The designers update the app on a fairly regular basis with improvements.

Definitely worth the price tag.
C: $6.99

Toodledo: I love that I can type up my to do list on my computer, organize it into folders depending on what the tasks are and sync it to my iPhone. Then I can tick off everything as I get it done.

I love ticking off that things are done!

Some of the features include setting up a repeating task (e.g. laundry qweekly), entirely customizable folders, lists tasks according to when they are due or by folder, you can add notes to tasks. They've added a notebook feature for the folders but I haven't really taken advantage of that yet. I can see it being useful for putting in contact information for a research project though.

Tasks can be organized into high to low priorities, or even star the ones you simply can't miss doing. The Hotlist automatically fills up with your most important tasks based on how you have organized them.

You can set up reminders with a series of fun sounds.

C: $3.99

File App:
This is a great way to store pdfs and word documents onto your device to save for later. I've filled mine with the lecture slides for this block so I can refer to them during lectures or review during down time. It really is all about being able to keep learning during downtime.

I also have my own versions of 'complete history and physical' sheets in it for 03:00 when I know I'm forgetting something, but can't remember what.

It's easy to set up sharing with your home wifi network so that you have your documents native to the device.

Some documents are just too big (my pdf version of the First Aid series), but it can still hold some large documents (my pdf version of the Case File series). I wouldn't bother getting the pro version since the free is so useful just as it is.

Free!

iFlashcards study helper:
This is another app you sync with your online account to have information native to your device. You can even share your login with someone you study with to enhance your pack of 'flash cards'. It's easy enough to make up the questions you know you'll need to review. I use this app for things like drug doses and uses, hormones, structures in anatomy. You can also put photos in.

When studying, you can mark cards you want to go back to or shuffle the deck and go through the whole thing again. You can also reverse how the cards are presented (i.e. given an answer, what was the question).

C: $3.99

PubMed On Tap:

Exactly what it sounds like. You need an internet connection for this one. By typing in keywords to the search engine, the app gives you a list of abstracts to peruse - the entire abstract. You can save the abstracts you want to look up in a file. If you have a mac you can sync this list with your computer. If there is a free article available, it will connect you with the resource.

I love it.

Even with just the abstract, you can get information on the latest research in whatever question is being discussed. I've used it to find the current guidelines on dosing of meds not commonly used and why paediatricians don't know about Octaplex.

The only real problem with it is a problem with me, my spelling. There is no autocorrect and it will only search for exactly what you put in.

The Lite version only gives you 20 (or 10?) abstracts at a time. I upgraded to this version within a day of using the Lite.

C: $2.99

Dragon Dictation:

This is an indulgent, not always useful app, good for when I'd rather talk out loud than type though. I'm impressed with how well it picks up my voice and converts it to written words.

The latest update adds to the keyboard that was available for editing. Now you can email, text, facebook, copy your dictation for use in another app or on your home computer.

Great for thinking out loud about research papers. It's a program I've seen for computers while at conferences and one that I plan on using in my own practice when I grow up.

Free!

more apps I'm using in clerkship

The Pre-test apps: There are a series of apps from Pre-Test. The same folks who put together the books. I have pdfs of the books as well, but I tended to use these instead. You can set up quizzes of varying lengths depending on how much time (or attention) you have. Each question has a detailed answer that can be too wordy, but can also be very helpful.

If you are writing an NBME these are very helpful. There are questions that only an American would ask, something I wasn't used to and was useful for passing my shelf exams.

I liked having these for "in between" times, waiting for clinic to start, an OR to start or your patient to make it in. But they are NOT cheap.

Available in medicine, psychiatry, emergency medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obs gyne, neurology, family medicine.

P: $29.99

Mnemonics: This resource has been pretty helpful, especially when trying to translate what a resident has said to me :)

It seems to have been put together by residents and medical students. I don't recognise all these study aids, but they are mostly useful. To be honest though, I didn't have that much time to really use them. It may be more helpful next year for the LMCE.

They can be filtered by discipline which can be very helpful. There's also a search function that lets you try to figure out why your surgery resident is talking about "Vindicate".

P: $1.99

Procedure Tracker: I was looking for a quick and organized way to keep track of the little procedures I get to do during clerkship so that I have them ready for my CaRMS tour. This is not the way to do it. It's not terribly user friendly and has very few procedures. To switch between specialties you need to change your settings each time, even thought there should be an incredible amount of overlap between many of them. Like many apps like this, it doesn't give you an option of putting in your own procedure. I get wanting to keep them unified so that you can quickly see what you have and haven't done, but I'd rather be able to add my own to their list.

But it's free.

P: Free

Point of Care References

This is a review I threw together to help our library decide which electronic resource should be available for the medical school.

UpToDate is my favourite. As far as I'm concerned, it's the gold standard. It is easy to search, has helpful tables and images, links to other useful articles, is updated often, has useful medication information.

I've compared the following resources to UpToDate based on the following 3 searches.
1. radiotherapy (a general skill)
2. paraneoplastic syndrome (a general medical condition with many causes)
3. bladder cancer (a specific disease)
Pretty obvious I put this together during my oncology rotation right?

DynaMed:
ease of finding material: I liked that it had an alphabetic browser
did it have what I wanted?: radiation therapy and paraneoplastic syndrome were marked 'work in progress'; bladder cancer was there
therapy: decent description, appreciated the links to medications
ddx?: no
description provided: brief
does it quote evidence?: yes
ease of use: 7/10
overall score: 5/10

Harrison's Online Textbook:
ease of finding material: all 3 were easily found with search and browse
therapy: yes
ddx: yes
description provided: lengthy
quoted evidence?: no
ease of use:9/10
overall score: 8/10

PCP Pier:
ease of finding material: good for specific diseases but bad for general conditions
did it have what I wanted: maybe, was difficult to find radiation therapy (general)
therapy: yes
ddx: yes
description: point form
quoted evidence?: yes
ease of finding use: 7/10
overall score: 7/10, I liked it for the specificity it gave with the disease but it was useless with general topics. Maybe this plus Harrison's would be a useful combination.

Essential Evidence Plus:
ease of finding material: liked the refining guidelines provided
did it have what I wanted?: yes, but not always available in one place
therapy: yes
ddx: not explicitly
description: point form
quoted evidence?: yes with the level of evidence (great!)
ease of use: 6/10
overall score: 7/10, I liked the way the evidence is presented but feel it would take a very long time to gather enough information to do a presentation on any given topic

Clinical Evidence (BMJ):
ease of finding material: good if you want something that the BMJ has published
did it have what I wanted?: no, but lots of other good stuff
therapy: yes
ddx:not obviously
description: charts and point form
quoted evidence?: yes
ease of use: 9/10 when browsing, 6/10 when looking for something specific
overall score: 7/10, not sure I'd actually use this resource

MD Consult
ease of finding material: OK to find material, difficult to find material at my level though; overview is not bad
did it have what I wanted?: yes, but not all in one place
therapy: yes
ddx: yes
description: lengthy and often summarized
quoted evidence?:some
ease of use: 7/10
overall score: 8/10, I like that the information is laid out by subtitle on the beginning page (overview vs. signs and symptoms)

more apps I'm using in clerkship

2009 EMRA Antibiotic Guide: This is an app designed by emergency physicians. It's not entirely complete but it's a fast way to get an idea of the direction to take when Antibiotics are needed.

You can start with an organ (pulmonary, skin, etc.), or by diagnosis, organism or topic. Common organisms and dosing are suggested for each. There's only a few steps to get to the dosing recommendations which is a real bonus.

This is cheaper than the Johns Hopkins version of an antibiotics guide and has fewer features. Your call.

P: C$15.99

Johns Hopkins ABX Guide: Organized by diagnosis, antibiotics, pathogens, management, vaccines and CME. This guide has more information than EMRA on vaccinations and tropical illnesses. The information is posted in a similar matter to how they post the 5MCC info. This can be a bit cumbersome to find info quickly but does give you significantly more data and suggestions than you get in EMRA.

It's a tough call. As someone who knows jack about antibiotics, this guide is a bit overwhelming. I'll use EMRA most often.

P: C$ 24.99

epocrates: I only use this for pill ID and the interaction tool. I get my dosing, adverse events, and other drug info from Dr. Drugs. The pill ID is most useful with an internet connection so you can actually compare the pills a patient has in their hand with the ones we know about. The interaction tool is great for comparing meds that patients are taking to rule out causes of weird symptoms.

Meds are discussed by dosing, black box warnings, contraindications, adverse reactions, drug intereactions, pharmacology...

P: free!

Eye Chart Light: An easy to use app. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but in a pinch, it helps with visual acuity.

P: free!

Eponyms: Something that I've found in clerkship is that our consultants use eponyms more than they use the names that make sense. We're taught logical names of conditions and structures but they were taught goofy names based on some dead guy. This app is quick to use and easy.

The eponyms are categorized by specialty, anatomy, tests and procedures. A short definition is provided for each eponym. Useful when your orthopod said "something that began with c" but you're not sure what.

Well worth having.

P: C$1.99, there's a free version too but I don't know how inclusive it is

and yet, still more to come

more iPhone/touch apps for clerkship

I started talking about the apps I had found useful in clerkship here. I still use Diagnosaurus, 5 Minute Clinical Consult and Dr. Drugs quite a bit. I also use a bunch more. I'll be the first to admit I have a ridiculous number of apps.

Wards: Patient Tracker: this is a program that lets you put the pts name, chief complaint, tests ordered and plans for discharge into your phone. It takes a bit of time to get everyone in which was a real deterrent from bothering to use it on surgery, but I did use it on medicine and found it helpful. I was walking around with lists of patient names with info scribbled under their names, updating from the previous day every day, trying not to lose a sheet and get attacked by the privacy police. (Speaking of the privacy police, there is a password requirement to enter and get the information.)

When the app first came out, you were restricted to the consults/tests in the bank. Now you can put your own in so that it becomes customized to the service.

It's great for following patients through their hospital stay and doing discharge summaries at the end since you've highlighted the big points while there were in hospital - if you take the time to enter the info. Really, time is the only drawback to this system.

P: C$4.99

Shozu: Lets you keep up with your blog between cases/in moments of serenity so your family and friends know you are alive. Easy enough to use. Doesn't let you type in landscape mode though which is a huge drawback.

P: C$4.99

Calculate (Medical Calculator) by QxMD: This really is the only calculator you'll need. And it's free. Just get it.

If you want more convincing, you can customize it to the rotation you're on or keep it at the general practitioner mode to have all calculations quickly available. It's not just fun with numbers like figuring out the anion gap, there's also check lists like the Ottawa Ankle Rules, Pediatric Glasgow Coma Scale and risk of relapse into heavy drinking.

It takes a little while to get used to all the options available to you and remembering to access them when you need them.

P: FREE!

Cardio, Heme, GI, Neph Calculators: These are all done by the MedQx guys. Just get the calculator above to have everything in one app, no redundancies.

Hospital Codebook/Phonebook: Your contacts list is a better way to handle this information. Not a useful app.

P: C$.99

A2Z of Dermatology: I'm on the fence about this app. If you already know the name of the dermatological feature you're looking for, you're away to the races. If not, it can be a bit of a long haul trying to figure out what the rash is that you're looking at. I'd prefer to see this as an algorhythm type app - like a derm calculator "what colour is the lesion" "is it elevated"...you have melanoma! Ah, maybe that's why, too much like diagnosing your own illness. But I digress.

The app lists the lesions in alphabetical order by their commonly known name. It gives you a photo and a description of what the lesion is, what may have caused it and often a treatment. There is usually a link through to Google images for other examples of the lesion, which is helpful.

But, not really worth the dough. Use google yourself for this.

P: C$3.99

more soon...

My new toy and clerkship

I decided not to get an iPhone for clerkship. It was going to be too expensive to pay for a data plan that would let me surf as much as I knew I would want to plus let me keep the couples plan I have. Instead, I went with an iTouch, 1st generation, 16G. I got it second hand from a class mate at a great price. It's beat up but works very well and I love it.


I've added a lot of programs to it, which means I've also spent a lot of money on the resources. I still think it was a good idea. There isn't a lot of practical info on which programs work best for med students doing their clerkship. I'm going to throw my opinion into the mix.

The 3 apps I used most often on CTU were Diagnosaurus, 5 Minute Clinical Consult and Dr. Drugs.

Scenario, my Senior Medical Resident pages me with the following..."Hi Imposter, I have a 58 year old female in emerg with hyponatremia and decreased level of consciousness. Please come down and do the admission to your team."

I'd start with my Diagnosaurus app and look up the Differentials for hyponatremia and decreased LoC. I used those lists to direct my questions, physical and investigations. Diagnosaurus lets you look things up according to symptoms (like hyponatremia) or disease (like renal tubular acidosis. It also has things divided by organ system which I didn't use at all.

If there were conditions on the differential I wasn't familiar with - err, WHEN things showed up I waasn't familiar with, I'd look them up on 5MCC. 5MCC has the disease described by the Basics (description, epidemiology, risk factors, general prevention, pathophys, etiology, associated conditions), Diagnosis (signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests & interpretations, differential diagnosis), Treatment (meds, additional treatment, in patient considerations), Ongoing Care (follow up, patient education, prognosis, complications) and references for the material given.

The diagnosis section was especially helpful in directing my investigations and the ongoing care was useful once the patients hit the wards. Reading through the basics made me look like less of an idiot before going to the morning report and being pimped by the consultants.

Patients come in on a huge list of medications sometimes, often ones I've never heard of. I used Dr. Drugs to help me figure out what the heck was going on. It's on the Skyscape app as well (pay extra for it though) so it's in one place and links to 5MCC. Very useful. The information is given in terms of Indications, Contraindications/Precautions, Adverse Reactions/Side Effects, Interactions (drug/drug, drug/natural products), Availability (tablets etc.), Dose (adult, paeds, geriatric, etc.), US Brand Names, Classifications (therapeutic and pharmacologic), Pregnancy Category, Pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, protein binding, metabolism/excretion, half-life), Canadian Brand name, Time/Action Profile (onset, peak, duration), Patient/Family teaching, pronunciation.

Interactions came in handy quite a few times when trying to sort out why a patient was having problems with their new meds, the dose is priceless for obvious reasons, and the time/action profile made it possible to predict when to check back on a patient to see how the meds were working.

I love clerkship. I have so many stories to tell. As soon as I get more time, I promise to update!