From Innovation to Intrapreneurship: Fostering academic success via the GridlockED project and innovation fund.

Background: Funding for educational innovations is increasingly scarce in academic medicine. While there is some funding for medical education research, this is often for discovery or application work, and there are few avenues for those with a heavy innovation focus to fund early work.

Objective Of The Innovation: The objective was to develop an intrapreneurial unit focused on medical education projects and scholarship.

The revised Approved Instructional Resources score: An improved quality evaluation tool for online educational resources.

Background: Free Open-Access Medical education (FOAM) use among residents continues to rise. However, it often lacks quality assurance processes and residents receive little guidance on quality assessment. The Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Approved Instructional Resources tool (AAT) was created for FOAM appraisal by and for expert educators and has demonstrated validity in this context.

BET 2: Treating migraines with diclofenac instead of a triptan.

A shortcut review was carried out to establish whether diclofenac is better than a triptan in treating migraine. 32 papers were found of which only 1 addressed this question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of this paper are tabulated.

STI initiative: Improving testing for sexually transmitted infections in women.

Canadian urgent care and walk-in medical clinics provide health care for a population that may be poorly covered by traditional health care structures. Despite evidence suggesting that women with urinary complaints experience a high incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), this population may be under-tested in this particular setting. The aim of this quality improvement initiative was to increase STI testing in women presenting with GU complaints.

Comparison of the age-adjusted and clinical probability-adjusted D-dimer to exclude pulmonary embolism in the ED.

Background: Diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE) in the emergency department (ED) can be challenging because its signs and symptoms are non-specific.

Objective: We compared the efficacy and safety of using age-adjusted D-dimer interpretation, clinical probability-adjusted D-dimer interpretation and standard D-dimer approach to exclude PE in ED patients.

Design/methods: We performed a health records review at two emergency departments over a two-year period.