Cases in medicine

Introduction: Continuous cardiac monitoring, or telemetry, is a noninvasive method of closely monitoring a patient’s heart rate and rhythm in the healthcare setting. Figuring out the right patient to monitor remains imperative, especially as its costs increase while there is pressure to reign in costs for healthcare (1). Growth in the United States healthcare expenditures is astronomical to say the least. Paradoxically, higher cost regions in the country are not associated with improved quality or outcomes. In many cases, the reverse is true (1). Variations in healthcare likely explain this discrepancy (2). An example of necessary variation is a patient who has an allergy to aspirin or chooses not to proceed with an intervention. Contrarily, unnecessary variation does not result in benefit to the patient and is associated with increased cost. For instance, a patient presents with stable atrial fibrillation and gets admitted for cardiac telemetry, the c...

I've had a few requests for prep guidance for step 1 so I am going to lay down a detailed account in the hope that it may help someone else one day as well. I am a graduate of Rawalpindi Medical College, your achievements throughout med school are useless when you compete with the rest of the world, the earlier in med school you realise this the better it is for you and your future. If you remain as ignorant as I have been during that time, it will dawn upon you by the time of your graduation that they are giving you a rolled up empty piece of paper and calling out your name in front of a bunch of people most of whom are even more ignorant than you as far as the dynamics of medical education are concerned around the world in this day and age. If you have already graduated and reading this and starting prep for step 1 now, with no electives and research in med school, congratulations, like me you also have wasted the last 5 years of your time. I had never planned to take the USMLE...