DundeeChest 3.0

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With less than a week to go before the start of the phase 2 program, DundeeChest is starting to warm up a wee bit. Last week saw over a thousand hits to the site from over 300 different individuals, so perhaps some of the new second year are getting in a bit of early work?

Today we have nearly completed the transfer of all the lectures on to the calendar for download prior to the lectures, and we’re working on getting the formative assessments put up on the site, or links put up to assessments already on BlackBoard.

If you want to get ahead, you can always check out the links section of the site, and see what else is out there. My recommendation for this week is the Podmedics podcast available for download on iTunes. This month they have been concentrating on respiratory medicine, with a 105 minute lecture broken up into smaller digestible segments on CXRs, ABGs, Spirometry, and some other stuff.

If you find anything useful out there, post it up here, and I’ll check it out, and put it on the site.

See you all on Monday.

In preparation for the phase 2 respiratory block, more lecture material is being made available on a daily basis. Today you can visit the respiratory infection page to find Dr France’s 2010 updates to his ever popular infection lectures. Or head over to the lung cancer materials page to see his lung cancer lectures.

The new BTS pleural guidelines have been published – they can be viewed here

If you want a short instructional video on how to aspirate an effusion, or put in a drain, here’s the BTS ePOD video, or at least, a section of it.

We find the ultrasound machine to be so useful in our practice on the wards – frequently the “obvious pleural effusion” turns out to be collapse, consolidation, elevated hemi-diaphragm, or a combination of them all. I’ve also found it incredibly useful for vascular access, and lymph node sampling. But here is a great example of how USS scanning can avoid life threatening “simple intervention”.

The Premier League starts this weekend, so the 2010-11 Fantasy Football League starts too. Join DundeeChest in the Ninewells League:

Use the code 1238397-256319 after picking your team to join the league. Click Here To Register Your Team

Whilst Jamie Oliver concentrates on getting school dinners back on the government’s agenda, I’ve been slaving away on some formative assessments for the upcoming second year respiratory block. There’s only three of them there just now, but it’s a start, and there’ll be more once I get around to writing them. Currently there are EMI questions, but we’ll expand that into MCQ, short answers, best of 5, that sort of thing. Hopefully this will become a useful bank of questions for you all. I know that one of the new 3rd year students is setting up a website dedicated to collating past paper questions, I’ll link to her site once she has it up and running.

Now I have an iPad, I have invested in the WordPress iPad App. So now I can update the site from anywhere.

It’s the future. Web 4.0

Dr McKinlay delivered her Asthma and COPD revision lecture this morning, and has asked me to put it somewhere useful for you! I’m in Englandshire at a conference, but by the wonder of the interwebs, here it is:

Asthma and COPD Revision

I’ll see you all tomorrow. I have to do a Trans-Bronchial Biopsy tomorrow morning before the lecture, so I might be a wee bit late. I shouldn’t be more than about 15 minutes late, if at all.

Remember to come to the revision lecture armed with questions to discuss. We’ll be talking about acid base balance, oxygenation, how to do EMI questions; and whatever else you want to talk about.

The revision lectures for the 2nd years have started in earnest. Dr Short delivered a wide ranging session on CAP, Bronchiectasis, TB, CF, Abscessed and much more. If you want to go through the lecture again, here it is:
Revision Lecture 1

And I know how much you all like to have your lectures posted up before the lectures actually happen, so here’s my lecture for next week:
Revision Lecture 2

See you all next week!

As DundeeChest gets older, he needs more and more sleep. I remember being able to get by on 4 to 6 hours a night, and feeling great on it. Now I need 8 hours minimum, and realistically 10 hours to really function well. A really late night (after midnight) puts me off kilter for days.

See this post to see why I need so much sleep these days…