Category: News

Osmosis.org has a new interview with the Creator and Editor-in-Chief of WikEM, as part their Leaders in Medical Education series.  Read some of the history behind how WikEM started.

“If anything should be free and open in this world, then certainly the knowledge to care for your fellow human during an emergency has to be on the top of that list.”  -Ross Donaldson, MD, MPH

Over the last six years, we have gone from having just a few people accessing the site per day to tens of thousands of sessions per month with over 100,000 downloads of the app to date.  WikEM is now the most popular emergency medicine-specific application in the world and is open to all medical providers (including medical students) across the globe to help edit, as a key open access resource.  We can now take that life-saving… Read more

Antibiotics are hard to remember and during a busy shift we all just want a quick place to refresh our memory.  The quick reference by system diagnosis provides a list of all the major treatments across the wiki.  Updating a dosing or adding alternative treatments will update the antibiotic on all necessary pages and allow the world free and up to date access to antibiotic dosing.

 … Read more

We’re pleased to announce that after a thorough review of our finances, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recently recognized the OpenEM Foundation, the overarching organization supporting WikEM, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity.

Please donate now and help make open access to medical knowledge possible for all!

If there are any universals in this world, then chief among them is an innate human desire to care for our fellow beings when in suffering and extremis. Our goal is to make sure the knowledge to perform that important task is freely available to all. Thank you for your generous support.

The June Newsletter is out. Topics include hemophilia, Lyme disease, mammalian bites, and arthritis.… Read more

Scott Weingart has put out a great EMCrit Podcast on the treatment and diagnosis of Thyroid Storm.  With thyrotoxicosis and thyroid storm being relatively rare diseases, wiki page highlights the treatment and diagnosis.  The severity of hyperthyroidism, thyrotoxicosis and thyroid storm can be assessed with the Burch-Wartofsky score. Treatment is focused on: Aggressive supportive care and early propranolol administration to decrease peripheral hormone conversion and decrease sympathetic surge. Also along with propranolol, thionamide administration (specifically PTU) blocks new hormone synthesis. Iodide can be administered afterwards to prevent further hormone production.… Read more

Regarding pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which of the following is NOT a criteria for which hospitalization should be considered?

A. Pregnancy
B. Tuboovarian abscess
C. Vaginal bleeding
D. A surgical emergency can not be excluded (e.g., appendicitis).
E. The patient is unable to tolerate an outpatient oral regimen.

…an excerpt from The Kaji Review … Read more

All content on WikEM is reviewed by editors who are committed to content quality and correctness.  The WikEM organization is extremely egalitarian with an open and transparent promotion process. The more your contribute to the wiki, the greater your level of influence and recognition within the organization. The wiki software tracks contributions and ranks authors based on contribution

• Casual users can contribute small changes
• Residents can participate individually or as part of a residency elective
• Any physician can advance through the official editorial levels.

As more content moves to the internet on platforms other than textbooks and journals, WikEM will use metrics such as these to advance the academic and educational careers of our contributors.… Read more

WikEM is proud to announce  this week’s sponsor, MedNexus, a search engine designed for healthcare providers.  They are developing a really exciting set of tools using semantic search to create a “Google for Medicine”.  Their search and discovery tools allow a provider to quickly find the most relevant articles, reviews, guidelines, and medical content to answer clinical questions while caring for patients.

The power of their system rests in a sophisticated ranking system to organize content by quality and relevance.  This means their results are not only more targeted to your clinical question but also of greater quality than a stand web search.

MedNexus offers a web search portal, iOS app, and they have an Android version on the way! We also had the privilege of talking… Read more

Which of the following is NOT a risk factor for cerebral edema in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)?

A. Elevated blood urea nitrogen

B. Low serum potassium on presentation

C. Treatment with bicarbonate

D. Age < 3 years

E. Failure of serum sodium to rise steadily with correction of hyperglycemia

…an excerpt from The Kaji Review … Read more