Essential Emergency Procedures

This portable quick-reference handbook gives residents, medical students, and practitioners a bedside refresher on the key components of 86 procedures used in emergency medicine. Procedures are grouped by organ system, with additional sections on nerve blocks and pediatric procedures. Unique to this handbook is a section on limited, goal-directed bedside ultrasonography and echocardiography—procedures that are an integral part of emergency medicine care and trauma assessment and are not described in detail in any other handbook. Each procedure is presented in a similar format: indications, contraindications, risks/consent issues, anatomic landmarks, technique, precautions, and pearls. More than 300 illustrations complement the text.

This portable quick-reference handbook gives residents, medical students, and practitioners a bedside refresher on the key components of 86 procedures used in emergency medicine. Procedures are grouped by organ system, with additional sections on nerve blocks and pediatric procedures. Unique to this handbook is a section on limited, goal-directed bedside ultrasonography and echocardiography—procedures that are an integral part of emergency medicine care and trauma assessment and are not described in detail in any other handbook.

Each procedure is presented in a similar format: indications, contraindications, risks/consent issues, anatomic landmarks, technique, precautions, and pearls. More than 300 illustrations complement the text.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Peder Todd Lindberg, MD, PhD(University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine)
Description:This is an attempt at a brief but comprehensive handbook of emergency procedures. It presents descriptions and pictures of common and uncommon procedures that must be performed in the emergency department in 1- 3 pages.
Purpose:The book is designed to be a quick-reference refresher for essential emergency procedures. Although the book is executed very well, this purpose is flawed from the beginning. A physician looking for a review of any procedure is likely looking for more depth than any handbook might achieve. While the book is certainly too big to be carried around, it is too brief to give appropriate support and assurance to one who is seeking it in the form of a review. A larger, more comprehensive text is almost certainly worth the investment of money and emergency department space.
Audience:The book is written for both student and practicing emergency medicine physicians in need of review.
Features:The scope is one of the book's true strengths. It covers procedures as common as suturing, and as dramatic as perimortem cesarean section. The illustrations are well labeled and useful, appropriately in black and white. The ultrasound images turn out surprisingly well for a book of this nature. However, while the book might help a student review for a test, I'd be surprised if it actually made a difference in the performance of a procedure. It simply does not contain the appropriate depth to answer sophisticated questions for an experienced hand, nor does it give the appropriate feel or confidence to the novice.
Assessment:This book begs a comparison to the classic procedure guide, Clinical Procedures in Emergency Medicine, 4th edition, Roberts and Hedges (Elsevier, 2004). While the large tome might be unwieldy and difficult to keep up to date, its comprehensiveness makes it the more sought-after guide for skill acquisition and review. Inevitably, the Roberts and Hedges book will remain the reference in emergency departments, and will be the source of choice for those wishing to acquire or review their skills. Essential Emergency Procedures, although well crafted and carefully written, has taken on too great a challenge in trying to briefly describe procedures that are difficult to teach even at the bedside. When limited to words and text, the description must be more complete in order to answer questions or give confidence to a performer.

Offers residents, medical students, and practitioners, a bedside refresher on the key components of 86 procedures used in emergency medicine. This book groups procedures by organ system, with sections on nerve blocks and pediatric procedures. It contains more than 300 illustrations.