Postal Codes and the Gallbladder
Rick Abbott rants on postal codes and cholecystectomies: the difference between when a gall bladder should come out and when it does come out.
Final News from ACEP12
All good things must come to an end, and so it is with #ACEP12. Rick Abbott shares his thoughts on the final day.
ACEP12 Days 2 and 3
Rick Abbott is back with some insights and perspectives from #ACEP12 Days 2 and 3 - but the really big news is that he is taking Twitter by storm!
The News from ACEP12 Day 1
Rick Abbott, with LITFL press pass in hand, reports from day 1 of #ACEP12, this year's ACEP Scientific Meeting.
I called in sick for a shift
Rick Abbot says there are few people in the world who can make the claim: "I called in sick for what would certainly have been the single most challenging and consequential shift of my career." He, however, is now one of them.
And now for the news…
Rick Abbott looks at the news in Tassie and at home in the States, which leads him to contemplate beanies for cops, the fires in Colorado, medical insurance and the joys of electronic health records.
Retrievals: Too… to stay here!
Retrievals: we don't use the term in the US - moving a patient from one hospital to another, even in the rare instance that a Doctor is in attendance, is a transfer.
I’m so old that…
Rick Abbott turns back the clock to the 1970s and takes a stroll through the years as he reminisces about emergency past.
Namaste! No overcrowding here…
Working as a doc in the Annapurna region of Nepal - a place where waiting room overcrowding didn't exist. In fact, waiting rooms didn't exist...
No emergency? No, thanks…
Uninsured in the US and diagnosed in the ER with a potentially lethal condition that isn't deemed an 'emergency', the hospital is not obliged to treat you
Overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded
Rick Abbott wonders why ERs across the world seem to have a few things in common: they're almost all overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded.... What can be done about it? It's just not cricket!
How much is that doggie in the ICU?
Rick Abbott has seriously gone walkabout this time... He's crossed the species barrier to see what emergency physicians can learn from our veterinary colleagues.