First Year Masters in Emergency Medicine Survival Guide

I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome you all to our Masters programme in Emergency
Medicine. I’m sure most of you are feeling overwhelmed, confused and would appreciate some guidance into
the year, as I did when I first enrolled. Thus, I have jotted down tips I have acquired and come to know over
the whole year, (most times learnt the difficult way).
The following are topics you must know INSIDE-OUT. These topics have a 100% probability of coming out in
one exam or another:

Physiology
✔ Cardiovascular Physiology
✔ Respiratory Physiology
✔ Acid-base
✔ Fluids and blood products
Pathophysiology
✔ Types of shock, Classes of shock
✔ Acute coronary syndrome
✔ Asthma/COPD
Pharmacology
In pharmacology you need to know the indications, contraindications, presentations, mechanism of actions,
routes and dosages, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics of the drug. Don’t worry, these can be found in
Martin and Sasada.
The important pharmacology topics are:
✔
✔ Inotropes
○ Dopamine
○ Dobutamine
○ Adrenaline
○ Noradrenaline
○ Propofol
✔ Neuromuscular Blockers ○ Ketamine
○ Suxamethonium ○ Etomidate
○ Atracurium
○ Vecuronium ✔ Opiates
○ Rocuronium ○ Morphine
○ Fentanyl
✔ Induction Agents ○ Pethidine
○ Midazolam

Anatomy
✔ Anatomy of the airway
✔ Anatomy of the endotracheal tube, laryngeal mask airway, laryngoscope

Skills
✔ Rapid Sequence Induction
✔ Airway management – oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal, intubation
Others
Advanced Cardiology Life Support (ACLS)
Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS)
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The Emergency Medicine course is structured in such a way that the knowledge you need to know above is
ABSOLUTELY essential for work in the Emergency Department.
Recommended Textbooks
Physiology

Vander’s Costanzo Guyton Kerry Brandis

Pharmacology Pathophysiology

Martin Sasada Rang & Dale Ganong

Clinical

Sarawak Handbook Frank Shan Tintinalli

Absolutely ESSENTIAL textbooks:
✔ Kerry Brandis

✔ Martin Sasada

✔ Tintinally

Tips and Tricks

✔ Use your time in the anaesthesia posting to learn as much as you can about induction agents, paralytic
agents and physiology (anaesthetists are generally experts on physiology!). This is also the time to
acquire skills, for example, in intubation.

✔ Make full use of the generally more laid-back time (shyyy, don’t tell Prof!) in anaesthesia to study for
the Part 1 exams! You are guaranteed to be much more busy and tired (therefore less quality time
studying), when doing the Emergency Medicine posting.

✔ Make sure you attend ALL of Dr Idzwan’s teachings.

✔ Having a camera is recommended for taking pictures of ECGs, Xrays, patients (get consent first).
Every time you encounter interesting cases, take notes and pictures of them. It is always good to have
a collection of these for M&M meetings.

✔ Emergency medicine is teamwork and best results are usually achieved through politeness and respect
for your colleagues, nursing staff and people from other departments. It is never wrong to support and
help each other in clinical work as well as in academic. Most importantly, enjoy yourself!

✔ From the beginning of each of your postings, be on the look-out for interesting cases and keep the
patient sticker labels. You need to do 2 case write-ups for each of your posting for submission.

Logbook
Throughout your 4 years, keep a logbook of procedures that you have done e.g. intubation, central line
insertions, wound closure and suturing, chest drains. Keep the patient’s sticker label every time you do any
procedures and stick it into your logbook. Record the date, the type of procedure and the indication of the
procedure in your logbook.

Recommended free softwares

✔ Firefox browser, with Scrapbook add-on installed (great for saving web pages for offline viewing)
✔ Evernote (keep and view notes anywhere and it syncs with your computer)

✔ Fox-it PDF (much much better and faster than Acrobat Reader!)

✔ Some of the recommended textbooks above are available in electronic format (ask us if you would like
them)