Marshall & Ruedy’s On Call, 4th Edition

• General principles: Overview of the professional, organisational, ethical and social traits required of the junior doctor on call
• Emergency calls: Risk-stratified approach to life-threatening airway, breathing, circulation, neurological disability and environment factors (ABCDE)
• Common calls: Explicit detail on how to deal with every call from urgent to non-life threatening, based on a standardised, reproducible clinical reasoning approach
• Investigations: How to interpret an ECG, common imaging, acid base, electrolyte and haematological tests when on call
• Practical procedures: How to perform a large array of practical procedures that may be needed when on call
• Formulary: Quick reference for the indications, actions, adverse effects, cautions, doses and routes of administration of the vast array of drugs encountered in ward patients
• Laboratory values: Normal values for all the common tests

This edition includes the full eBook on eBooks+ with additional reading material, high-quality images, procedural videos and references available on https://litfl.com.

Section A – General Principles

• Approach to the diagnosis and management of on-call problems
• Professionalism and teamwork
• Documentation and communication
• Ethical and legal considerations
• Death, dying and breaking bad news
• Transferring the unwell patient
• Junior doctors’ health and wellbeing

Section B – Emergency Calls

• Critically ill patient
• Cardiac arrest
• Acute airway failure
• Acute respiratory failure
• Acute circulatory failure
• Disability: acute neurological failure
• Environment, exposure and examination
• Hospital-based emergency response codes

Section C – Common Calls

• Shortness of breath, cough and haemoptysis
• Chest pain
• Heart rate and rhythm disorders
• Hypotension
• Hypertension
• Altered mental status
• Collapse including syncope
• Falls
• Headache
• Seizures
• Weakness and dizziness
• Abdominal pain
• Postoperative ward calls
• Altered bowel habit
• Gastrointestinal bleeding
• Haematuria
• Decreased urine output and acute kidney injury
• Frequency and polyuria
• Leg pain
• Febrile patient
• Skin rashes
• Transfusion reactions

Section D – Investigations

• Electrocardiogram
• Urinalysis
• Arterial and venous blood gases
• Chest X-ray
• Abdominal X-ray
• CT head scan
• Hyper- and hypoglycaemia
• Hyper- and hyponatraemia
• Hyper- and hypokalaemia
• Hyper- and hypocalcaemia
• Anaemia
• Coagulation disorders

Section E – Practical Procedures

• General preparation for a practical procedure
• Infection control and standard precautions
• Blood cultures
• Peripheral venous cannulation
• Basic ultrasound and difficult peripheral cannulation
• Arterial puncture
• Administering an injection
• Local anaesthetic infiltration
• Nasogastric tube insertion
• Urinary catheterisation
• Paracentesis
• Pleural tap
• Chest drain insertion and removal
• Lumbar puncture
• Joint aspiration
• Cardiac monitoring and the electrocardiograph
• Defibrillation
• Electrical cardioversion (DC reversion)
• Transthoracic cardiac pacing

Section F – Formulary

• On-call formulary

Analgesics and local anaesthetics
Cardiovascular
Respiratory and allergy
Gastrointestinal
Neurological
Psychotropics
Antimicrobials
Endocrine and metabolic
Genitourinary
Antidotes

Section G – Laboratory Values

• Normal laboratory ranges

Anthony F. T. Brown, AM, FRCP, FRCS (Ed), FACEM, FRCEM, Professor of Emergency Medicine, Mayne Academy of Critical Care, Faculty of Medicine MD Program, University of Queensland, Brisbane; Senior Staff Specialist (Pre-Eminent Status), Emergency and Trauma Centre, Royal Brisbane and Women’ s Hospital, Brisbane, Australia, Mike Cadogan, MA(Oxon), MBChB, FACEM, FFSEM, Staff Specialist in Emergency Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth; Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of LITFL.com, Australia, Antonio (Tony) Celenza, MBBS, MClinEd, FACEM, Professor of Emergency, University of Western Australia, Perth; Staff Specialist, Department of Emergency Medicine, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth, Australia and Viet Tran, BMedSci, MBBS, FACEM, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Tasmanian School of Medicine, University of Tasmania; Director, Tasmanian Emergency Medicine Research Institute, Department of Health, Tasmania; Staff Specialist, Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Hobart Hospital, Tasmania, Australia