Tennessee medicine : journal of the Tennessee Medical Association
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More than 22 million Americans are living with addiction, including nearly seven million who misuse prescription medications. However, most medical schools and residency programs provide little to no education addressing alcohol and drug addiction. Implementation of a new addiction medicine curriculum at a single internal medicine program provided an opportunity for knowledge assessment in a select population of health professionals. We hypothesized that knowledge of addiction medicine would not differ by training level or geographical location of medical school, but that knowledge would improve following a structured curriculum. ⋯ Knowledge of addiction medicine can be improved for medical students and residents in an academic medicine department. Significant improvements were observed following completion of eight hours of interactive didactics.
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Describe the characteristics of the Tennessee (TN) Emergency Medicine (EM) workforce. ⋯ While there is clearly a need for more emergency medicine residency training programs in Tennessee, the need to continue to provide advanced training for family medicine residency trained physicians is also clear. Family medicine doctors provide most of the rural emergency medicine in Tennessee.
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Case Reports
Hiding in plain sight: H1N1 influenza presenting with respiratory failure and normal chest radiography.
Sepsis and respiratory failure are uncommon complications of infection with H1N1 influenza. In the majority of cases of H1N1-associated sepsis and respiratory failure found in the literature, evidence of pneumonia or the acute respiratory distress syndrome was seen on chest radiography. This case report describes the clinical characteristics of a patient who presented with septic shock and multi-system organ failure due to H1N1 influenza, but had normal chest radiography. Beyond describing a unique presentation of H1N1-related sepsis, this report highlights the need for clinicians to maintain a high index of suspicion for infection with H1N1 influenza in patients with sepsis and respiratory distress.