Emergency physicians' perceptions of critical appraisal skills: a qualitative study.

Background: Critical appraisal of medical research is a valuable skill set that emergency physicians must learn in order to become competent clinicians. Despite the need for effective critical appraisal skills training, these skills have remained difficult to teach and assess. This study aimed to explore emergency physicians' perceptions of the barriers and motivations for learning critical appraisal skills in order to develop more successful critical appraisal training methods for Emergency Medicine (EM) residents.

The time-sensitive challenge of diagnosing spinal epidural abscess in the emergency department.

Spinal epidural abscess (SEA) is a rare but devastating condition. Entry of infectious contents into the epidural space occurs via contiguous infected tissue, hematogenous spread, or iatrogenic inoculation. Traditionally, emergency providers are taught to assess for the "classic triad" of spinal pain, fever, and neurological deficits, but this constellation of findings is seen in only 10-15% of cases.

Regulation of AMP-activated protein kinase by multisite phosphorylation in response to agents that elevate cellular cAMP.

The AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and cAMP signaling systems are both key regulators of cellular metabolism. In this study, we show that AMPK activity is attenuated in response to cAMP-elevating agents through modulation of at least two of its alpha subunit phosphorylation sites, viz. alpha-Thr(172) and alpha1-Ser(485)/alpha2-Ser(491), in the clonal beta-cell line INS-1 as well as in mouse embryonic fibroblasts and COS cells.