Everything in its right place

I once chided my med school roommate for entering dozens of numbers into his landline phone's high-capacity speed-dialer. After programming a few frequently-dialed numbers, I argued, you'll end up wasting more time entering digits than you could ever save through speed-dailing - the effort outweighed the benefit.

He had a lengthy response, that appealed to a sense of order and touted the less-tangible benefits of reducing cognitive load. The phone is for calling people. By having people's numbers in the phone, instead of in a half-dozen notepads and desk drawers scattered about the apartment, he could make calls without much fuss. He didn't have to remember whose numbers resided where. He could unburden his mind to focus on other (presumably more involved) tasks.

I was still a little skeptical (why not keep a list of numbers by the phone?) but saw his point. And it's colored my organizational decisions ever since - especially since Allen's Getting Things Done places such high priority on reducing the mental stress associated with reminders - to improve clarity, creativity and fulfillment.

You can go FOAM again

Last month I got on stage at SAEM's Annual Meeting, and said (among other things) that excelling at medical education through social networks was a calling - one that I didn't hear. Despite being an early adopter of social media for EM education, it's clear when you look at the best exemplars of #FOAMed that there's a passion behind what they do. Just look at the prodigious output and quality at sites like ALiEM or Emcrit, for instance.

And while I've lodged some criticisms of #FOAMed (in the pages of EPMonthly and in a Skeptic's Guide to Emergency Medicine podcast), it's mostly because they've been so successful in teaching their areas of expertise that they risk crowding out EM core content. You can't blame the listeners, though - who wouldn't rather spend a few hours listening to experts discussing the finer points of critical care, instead of reading vanilla core content written in a scholarly, passive voice?

But I'm not trying to continue this debate - just point out that I think #FOAMed is evolving.

CMD 2014 talk on acute and chronic liver emergencies

Welcome, readers from Clinical Decision Making 2014 in sunny Ponte Vedra.

The most recent version of my slides (some tweaks from what's on your USB drives) is available.

You can also review my references and I've put up a cleaned up, slightly abridged version of my speaker's notes as well.

Questions and comments are always welcome! Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @nickgenes.