Minor Emergencies: Second Edition

Book Preface

Because a particular condition is labeled as minor, we often see only cursory descriptions of it in textbooks of emergency medicine, which are appropriately oriented toward more serious problems. It is difficult and almost impossible for the student, the new resident, or an inexperienced emergency physician to fi nd a useful description of many of the entities covered in this book. Yet it is often just these physicians who are assigned to the walk-in clinics, the urgent care sections of the major teaching emergency departments, and the areas where the minor conditions are likely to be cared for. The logic appears to be that if you haven’t completed your training, you can’t do any harm if the conditions to which you are assigned responsibility aren’t very serious.

I wish that I had been able to provide this book to the many medical students and residents who have struggled through their early emergency department rotations, and I hope that it won’t take long for it to find its way into the urgent care and fast-track areas of major emergency departments. You don’t have to be a student or a resident to profi t from reviewing the material in this book, however; it will also benefi t physician assistants and nurse practitioners who have responsibilities for minor emergencies, as well as office practitioners who encounter these problems in their own locations.

Minor Emergencies: Splinters to Fractures is fi lled with useful information that can benefit all students and residents. It is fi lled with the style and expertise that can only come from many years of real clinical experience. It is refreshing to see that experience can be introduced into an academic communication, and it is reassuring that the patients with these conditions will experience prudent and good outcomes if this advice is followed. Most important, many unnecessary side tracks can be avoided by following the author’s recommendations.

Descriptions of the conditions that are commonly labeled “minor” can be found here, along with a wealth of clues to their recognition and experienced tips for management. How to separate the true minor problem from the subtle major one is well described in each case. There are also very helpful management suggestions to help guide the inexperienced physician away from performing too many imaging or laboratory studies.

For those patients with true minor emergencies, care still needs to be appropriate so that the condition won’t deteriorate into a true threat to life or limb. Moreover, the ability to confine the care of the minor emergency to the management appropriate to a minor problem requires expertise and sophistication so that too much time and money are not spent in trying to prove that a major problem is not present in an occult form.

After reading this book, it might be necessary to modify the defi nition of minor emergency. When I have my next minor emergency, I can only hope that the physician caring for me possesses the degree of expertise that is exemplifi ed in these writings, and that he or she has read and assimilated the material in this book.

Peter Rosen, MD
Senior Lecturer, Medicine, Harvard School of Medicine
Visiting Professor, Emergency Medicine, University of Arizona School of Medicine
Attending Emergency Physician, Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center
Attending, Emergency Teaching Faculty, Massachusetts General Hospital