I’ve often extolled the virtues of magnesium to my residents as well as on twitter. It’s a sign of a well seasoned emergency physician to take any medical problem, and say “a little magnesium couldn’t hurt.” In this instance, a…
When you’re out in the field, IV access is precious. So you do everything you can to prevent losing a good line. In concept, Ranger IVs are perfect. They are a ruggedized field IV system in which an IV is…
Sometimes, when you’re in Rome, you shouldn’t act like Romans. This case report comes from Taiwan, where the authors got to take care of this intriguing case. A 49 year old male patient presented to the hospital with bullous lesions…
When you are teaching procedures, most educators prefer for the first couple of attempts to be simulations, and not on actual patients. But if you’re going to be teaching wilderness procedures, there are other factors in question. Do you use…
As I have written about before, more and more people are taking oral anticoagulants for various medical conditions. For better or for worse, they aren’t then staying at home in a padded room, but continuing on their daily activities and…
Most teaching faculty work at academic programs, which typically aren’t in areas considered “wilderness” by the average layperson. Thus, teaching wilderness and austere medicine in an urban environment is necessary for those of us who can’t get our departments to…
When someone is lost in the woods, it often becomes the responsibility of the search and rescue teams to find them. It’s not a simple as one may think, however. The grid lines they follow need to be designed to…
It’s no secret that the “extreme athlete” industry continues to steamroll mainstream athletics. This isn’t a new trend, as evidenced by the fact that this review article is from 2007. Sorry for making everyone feel old by reminding them that…
In case the noodling post hasn’t already made you afraid of getting in the water, here is yet another thing to worry about with regards to catfish. Catfish have multiple spines, and if you weren’t aware of that already then…
No, I haven’t switched to writing a CAM blog. I’ve covered natural remedies before, simply because that may be all you have at hand in the back country. This isn’t one of those situations. I don’t expect you to pull…
I’ve written here before about austere wound care, and one of the important comments I received was “irrigate with water clean enough to drink.” That’s a very valid point, as you don’t want to introduce new pathogens into the wound.…