Tag Archive: websites

FREIDA: Also a Great Resource to Compare Specialties

FREIDA Online is a fantastic resource for any medical student. I recently wrote about how students can compare individual residency programs using FREIDA's various different variables.  The database is not limited to comparing individual training programs; it also allows students to compare different specialties.  

The "Specialty Training Statistics" section provides basic statistics about training in each specialty. Variables presented for each specialty include:

  1. Number of residency programs in the US
  2. Length of training programs
  3. Average number of interviews performed by each residency program
  4. Total number of residents
  5. Gender Gap for each specialty
  6. Average number of faculty per resident
  7. Average number of work hours per week for each specialty
  8. Average number of days off per week  (THESE LAST TWO ARE VERY IMPORTANT!  COMPARE SPECIALTIES!)

LINK HERE

 

The "Graduate Career Plans" section of FREIDA provides information about the careers plans of each of the medical specialties.  Variables presented for each specialty include:

  1. Percentage of residency graduates pursuing further training
  2. Percentage of last year's graduates who are in private practice
  3. Percentage of last year's graduates who are employed in academic settings
  4. Percentage in the military
  5. Percentage employed as basic scientists
  6. Percentage who are unemployed

In each case, the statistics are taken from the most recent graduating class and the database is updated each year. 

LINK HERE

 

Read these data carefully.  I found that the "Hours Per Week" section was very useful and very realistic!

FREIDA: A Great Resource when Applying to Residency

Applying to residency is equally exciting as it is stressful. I found myself searching for any information I could find about different programs and what made each program different.  During my hours of searching I found that the AMA’s site, FREIDA ONLINE, was one of the most useful resources.FREIDA is an online database of all ACGME regulated residency and fellowship training programs.  The FREIDA database is searchable by specialty or by state.  The amount of information available for each program is truly staggering, here is just a short list of some of the information you can find out about each training program:

 

  • Program director name and contact information
  • Length of the program
  • Institution and hospital affiliations
  • Size of the residency
  • Number of applicants interviewed
  • Number of faculty
  • Average work hours
  • Weeks of call per year
  • Amount of didactic lecture
  • Salary information
  • Vacation weeks
  • Benefits information

Now that I know the inner workings of my residency, I looked back at the FREIDA profile to see if the information is correct, and I can vouch for the database, it is spot on.  They provide an analysis of the averages of many of those statistics for each specialty. So, you can compare the ‘hours worked in a week’ of a program you are interested in with the national average. Click here to access the ‘training statistics’.

Is the Patient’s Device Safe for MRI?

MRIsatety.com is a great resource for medical students, residents, and all medical personnel.  We all know that when a patient has a pacemaker from 2004 that they can not get a thoracic MRI. However, what if the patient had a recent shoulder replacement? What if the patient has a port for chemotherapy? What if the patient had recent spinal surgery? No matter what the circumstance, you can search this website for the patient’s device and find out if it is safe for an MRI.

The main website is…
http://www.mrisafety.com

Or, the searchable list of implantable devices can be found directly at…
http://www.mrisafety.com/list_search.asp

The list of all searchable products includes:

  • Pumps
  • Aneurysm clips
  • Bone and Nerve stimulators
  • Cardiac Pacemakers and AICDs (defibrillators)
  • Breast and other soft tissue implants
  • Coils, Filters, Stents, Grafts
  • Dental Implants and Devices
  • Catheters
  • Clips
  • Foreign Bodies
  • Ocular Implants, lens
  • Sutures
  • Etc.

 

Pre-operative Clearance Checklist

A frequent question in the outpatient setting is whether or not a patient is optimized for surgery. There are a number of things that a physician must check in order to properly send a patient back to a surgeon with a gold star. I recently used the Johns Hopkins Internet Learning Center (HopkinsILC) to study the basic pre-operative evaluation and I highly recommend it (requires access from your school or hospital, many hospitals have access, ask your librarian).  There is a great review pdf available from HopkinsILC which details some of the highlights of the lesson.  Below I will summarize some points from the pdf. To learn more, you should ask for access to HopkinsILC, it is a great resource.

 

  1. If the patient has any active cardiac issues, surgery should be postponed.  This includes…
    1. Recent myocardial infarction (<30 days)
    2. Active cardiac disease (unstable angina or worse)
    3. An uncorrected arrhythmia
    4. Severe aortic stenosis

 

  1. The patient must be able to complete 4 or more ‘metabolic equivalents of task’ (METS).  This includes
    1. Climbing a flight of stairs
    2. Walk for 30 minutes
    3. Play tennis, bowling, or other more intense sports
    4. Able to vigorously clean a house (scrub floor, move furniture)

 

  1. There are a few medications that must be stopped prior to surgery. Some examples (not an exhaustive list) include…
    1. If the patient is on blood thinners (coumadin) or anti-platelet drugs (plavix, lovenox, etc) these may have to be stopped and the surgeon will have to be part of the discussion
    2. Diuretics, ACE-inhibitors, and ARBS are usually held
    3. Oral hypoglycemics are usually held for 1-2 days
    4. Insulin is usually decreased by 50%
    5. Sedatives are usually held

 

Again, here is the link to the pdf explaining the above points. And here is the link to the HopkinsILC website.

 

 

American College of Radiology: Appropriateness Criteria

Have you ever wondered what imaging test should be ordered for your patient? What radiologic test would be most beneficial in this situation? What imaging test should I order first? If a patient comes in with a painful knee, should I get an x-ray or go straight to MRI?  If a woman comes in with a non-tender breast mass should I get an ultrasound before the mammogram?  These are difficult questions; luckily The American College of Radiology (ACR) has our back! The ACR publishes a fantastic online resource they call the “Appropriateness Criteria” which details the best imaging tests for nearly every presentation.

http://www.acr.org/ac

They website allows the user to choose between a variety of organ systems (e.g. women’s health, urology, gastrointestinal).  In each organ system the user can then choose a specific complaint (e.g. breast mass, hematuria, dysphagia). For each complaint, the ACR then allows the user to choose what specific patient presentation is occuring (e.g. 35 year old woman with a new breast mass vs. 35 year old woman with a mass seen on mammogram vs. 70 year old woman with a new breast mass). In each circumstance, the ‘Appropriateness Criteria” explains what is the best radiologic test to help diagnose the patient’s problem.  They explain in detail the advantages and disadvantages of each test (MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, x-ray, etc) for each specific problem.

The criteria are updated every few years, the most recent data comes from 2009. One of the best parts about the ACR Appropriateness Criteria can be found at the end of each section. Not only do they make suggestions about which tests will be most useful in diagnosis, they also provide a literature review for EVERY SINGLE patient complaint which outlines what research and studies they are using when making their suggestions.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this website. In fact, there are few resources that I can recommend higher. I have used this many times and they intricacies and precision of the criteria still surprise me.  There is NO BETTER RESOURCE available to determine which imaging tests are indicated for a specific patient presentation.

 

Dealoz: Textbook Price Comparison

Throughout college and medical school I had to buy thousands of dollars worth of textbooks. During my first year of medical school I came across the world’s best textbook website: http://www.dealoz.com/.  DealOz allows you to search all available websites, auction sites, book stores, and online sites for the textbook you are looking for. All you need is a title or IBSN and DealOz will do the rest of the work.  If you have every used www.kayak.com for flight tickets, DealOz works the same way by comparing all available options.

After inputting the book of choice, DealOz will compare all of these locations and report back to you the lowest price available. You can search for all available books, or you can choose to search only for ‘new’ books. DealOz will then link you to your seller of choice.  Try it, you will like it. I have saved hundreds of dollars using their website.

Again, here it is

http://www.dealoz.com/

Histology Websites

Image from "Ed's Histology Review"

Histology is an extremely important topic during medical school, both in the pre-clinical years as you study anatomy and pathology, and during the clinical years when you are diagnosing patients. Many questions during school, including all three parts of the USMLE or COMLEX test will include histologic slides and ask for diagnosis or interpretation.  It is imperative that all medical students get a solid foundation in histology.  Years ago, most student would purchase histology textbooks.  However, recently, a number of medical schools have created free and easy-to-use websites for studying histology.  If you are still a book person, let me suggest Histology: A Text and Atlas which has great slides and explanations.  Otherwise, if you are like me and would like to save the money, let me outline some of the best histology review sites on the internet.

If you don’t want to spend the money and don’t mind using websites to study, let me recommend two fantastic  histology websites

If you know of other great websites, please let me know.

 

The University of Utah Anatomy Tutorials

I recently posted about a great radiology website that is also a good study tool for gross anatomy.  It is i

mportant to remember that most anatomy tests will include a few questions using radiology images.  However, I found that the best way to study anatomy was through anatomy dissection websites.  The University of Utah provides a great website to their students, and it is open for public use too. Their anatomy website is broken up by organ system and features hundreds of images and quizzes.

http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/HISTHTML/ANATOMY/ANATOMY.html

They have an entirely different site dedicated to neuroanatomy.  This is the clearest and best organized review I could find on the internet.

http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/HISTHTML/NEURANAT/NEURANCA.html 

In addition to the basic anatomy website, they also have many histological and pathological slides and quizzes.  The histology review on their website was one of the best I could find.  The pathology slides are equally worthwhile, though they are likely more useful for courses other than anatomy.

http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/

A website for studying radiology

During gross anatomy it is important to find good resources to study pathology and radiology, as many of your test questions will use these applications of anatomy.  There are a few resources that are very good, and many resources that are mediocre.  I have found that learningradiology.com is one of the best ways to study radiology.

http://learningradiology.com/

The website is totally free and does not even require a login.  It is broken up by organ system, which is perfect for gross anatomy. There are free quizzes that range from simple to very demanding.  Many of their questions and “Cases of the week” are case based problems, and very similar to test formats and USMLE formats.

This would be a great and free study tool for gross anatomy, for reference whenever you need to study a specific radiologic finding, or for a radiology rotation.

How to find the right journal

Most medical students will take part in research during medical school.  A few students will have the oppurtunity to present their research either at a national meeting or as a peer-reviewed article.  As I completed a few projects in school it was always difficult for me to know what journal would be the best fit for my research.  Luckily, I stumbed on a fantastic tool to help you identify journals where your paper would be a good fit.

JANE (Journal Author Name Estimator) is a free online tool that uses the title of your proposed paper and matches it to appropriate journals.  It does this by searching the titles of articles in all available journals and finding similar words and phrases in the already published titles.  I have used this software a few times and it always works very well.

http://www.biosemantics.org/jane/

You can also use the software to find authors that published papers similar to the paper you are submitting.  The same algorithm is used, but your title is match to authors who published similar papers.  Finally, you can use the software to find specific articles that are similar to title that you search.  I have found the first two capabilities to be very useful, but I think the simple search engine on pubmed is more reliable for searching for specific articles.

Here is the link again,

http://www.biosemantics.org/jane/

 

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