Differences in Self-expression Reflect Formal Evaluation in a Fourth-year Emergency Medicine Clerkship.

Introduction: Medical schools have begun to incorporate self-reflection exercises into their curricula, with the belief that these exercises help students master the material more deeply and perform better. Reflection may be a potential learning tool for emergency medicine (EM), but there are few data supporting this hypothesis. The authors evaluated the relationship between a linguistic marker of the degree of reflection after a student's shift in an emergency department and that student's clerkship performance.

Abdominal Pain in the Geriatric Patient.

Abdominal pain in the elderly can be a challenging and difficult condition to diagnose and treat. The geriatric population has significant comorbidities and often takes polypharmacy that can mask symptoms. The presentation of common conditions can be different than that in the younger population, often lacking the traditional indicators of disease, making it of pivotal importance for the clinician to consider a wide differential during their workup.

Hip pain and fever: when it's not a septic joint, what's next?

Hip pain and fever in children include a broad differential. Most concerning is the possible diagnosis of a septic joint, which carries significant morbidity. We describe the case of a 13-year-old boy with fever and hip pain who was referred to the emergency department with concern for septic hip.

Medical student education in emergency medicine: do students meet the national standards for clinical encounters of selected core conditions?

Background: Establishing a core curriculum for undergraduate Emergency Medicine (EM) education is crucial to development of the specialty. The Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine (CDEM) National Curriculum Task Force recommended that all students in a 4(th)-year EM clerkship be exposed to 10 emergent clinical conditions.

Objectives: To evaluate the feasibility of encountering recommended core conditions in a clinical setting during a 4(th)-year EM clerkship.