MASA Link

Program Description
Acute pain, occurring as a result of injury, illness, and necessary medical procedures, is one of the most frequent adverse stimuli experienced by children. The common "wisdom" that children neither respond to, nor remember, painful experiences to the same degree that adults do is simply untrue. Evidence suggests that physicians, nurses, and parents underestimate the amount of pain experienced by children, and that they overestimate the risks inherent in the drugs used in the treatment of pain. Unrelieved pain interferes with sleep, leads to fatigue and a sense of helplessness, and may result in increased morbidity and/or mortality. While the past 25 years has witnessed notable advances in the understanding of pain during development and improvements in the management of acute pain in the pediatric population, this knowledge has not been widely or effectively translated into routine clinical practice. In addition to the numerous myths, insufficient knowledge among caregivers and inadequate application of nowledge contribute to the lack of effective management. The pediatric acute pain experience involves the interaction of physiologic, psychological, behavioral, developmental, and situational factors. Pain is an inherently subjective, multifactorial experience and should be assessed and treated as such. Physicians are responsible for eliminating or assuaging pain and suffering in children when possible. Moreover, The Joint Commission (formerly known as JCAHO) has made pain assessment and management a focal point of its review process. Physicians and other healthcare professionals need current, state-of-the-art education to assist them in developing the skills required to evaluate and manage pain in children. In this video, Dr. Neil Schechter, a pioneer in pediatric pain relief, reviews important considerations in the pain management in children, strategies for assessing pain, specific pain assessment tools, and nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic management options specific to children.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designated for pediatricians, primary care physicians, emergency medicine phsicians, hospitalists, and other hospital-based healthcare personnel.

Learning Objectives
After taking part in this CME activity, participants should be able to:

Review the effects of pain and stress in children
Delineate the general principles of pain management in children
Describe developmentally appropriate strategies and tools for assessing pain in children
Utilize nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic pain treatments in children
Recognize the need for a multidisciplinary approach to improve acute pain management

Program Description
Patient falls continue to remain the largest single category of reported incidents in hospitals, making fall prevention a vital National Patient Safety Goal from The Joint Commission. As many as 10% of older adults fall during an acute care impatient stay. While the acute care environment itself contributes to falls in older persons, manifestations of acute illness, polypharmacy, and medication side effects are also risk factors in the acute care setting. The injuries as a result of falls in older people are a significant source of disability and will no longer be compensated for treating certain preventable conditions acquired during patients stays, including injuries from falls. In this video, Dr. Steve C. Castle outlines the necessary steps and recommendations for improving fall prevention in the acute care setting and for exceeding compliance requirements.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for geriatric specialists, primary care physicians, emergency medicine physicians, hospitalists, and other hospital-based healthcare personnel.

Learning Objectives
After taking part in this CME activity, participants should be able to:

Analyze where and how falls are likely to occur
Identify older patients who are at high risk of falling
Plan Care through interdisciplinary communication and assessment
Implement organization-wide steps that will help recude the over risk of falls and injuries
Fulfill the Joint Commission training requirements

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is the leading preventable cause of hospital death in the US. Although the risk of VTE is thought to be most commonly associated with surgical patients, 50 to 70 percent of symptomatic thromboembolic events and 70 to 80 percent of fatal pulmonary embolism (PE) occur in nonsurgical patients. In September 2008, the Acting Surgeon General issued a “Call to Action” to reduce the number of VTE cases in the country, urging a coordinated, multifaceted plan and emphasizing the need for evidence-based practices. In addition, Joint Commission/National Quality Forum VTE voluntary consensus standards for 2009 will be available for data collection and reporting for discharges beginning autumn 2009. In this video, Dr. Steven Cohn provides the latest guidelines and study results pertaining to VTE prophylaxis and offers advice for meeting current and forthcoming quality measures.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, emergency medicine specialists, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals involved in the care of patients at risk for venous thromboembolism. 

Two common cognitive disorders that frequently pose a challenge in the acute care setting are delirium and dementia. Distinguishing between these two age-related conditions can often be difficult. Moreover, these disorders often occur together in older hospitalized patients. The inability to diagnose delirium or dementia appropriately can increase morbidity and mortality in this patient population. It is therefore important to understand these conditions in detail, as well as to have a firm grasp on diagnosis, causes, and treatment options. In this video, Dr. Jay Lombard reviews the pathophysiology, etiology, and clinical characteristics of each of these conditions, and provides the latest evidence-based treatment approaches to effectively manage patients presenting with delirium and/or dementia.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, emergency medicine specialists, neurologists, and other healthcare professionals involved in the care of patients who present with delirium and/or dementia. 

Gender plays an important role in a patient’s risk of developing disease, as well as in the complications that are most likely to occur. Data also show that gender may affect what treatment options are most appropriate. While men with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) appear to benefit from early treatment using invasive options, women often do not. Current American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines for unstable angina/non–ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (UA/NSTEMI) recommend a conservative strategy for women with low-risk features. They also stress the use of risk stratification as an integral prerequisite to decision making, not only in the intensive initial assessment of patients but also during continuous clinical assessment. In this video program, Dr. Christopher Cannon addresses the treatment of women with ACS, specifically with regard to early risk stratification and assessment, the role of cardiac biomarkers, and the efficacy and safety of GP IIb/IIIa inhibitor therapy.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for cardiologists, emergency medicine physicians, primary care physicians, and other healthcare professionals interested in the treatment of acute coronary syndromes. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has predicted that up to 30% of Americans could become infected with the novel H1N1 virus this year and next if a successful vaccine campaign and other mitigation efforts are not implemented quickly enough. Many US hospitals—and especially emergency departments—are already in a state of crisis, facing challenges that cannot be fixed without long-term, fundamental, and systemic changes. But ready or not, a flu pandemic is here, with a second and potentially more severe wave possible this fall and winter. By applying basic preparedness principles, along with some out-of-the-box strategic planning, hospitals can gain a footing against the coming pandemic. In this video, Dr. Stuart Weiss reviews the H1N1 disease characteristics; the current status and potential future threat of the influenza pandemic; employee protection strategies, including administrative, environmental, and engineering controls, and personal protective equipment; vaccine recommendations; and antiviral prophylaxis and therapy.

(60 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, emergency medicine physicians, hospitalists, infectious disease specialists, and other hospital-based healthcare personnel. 

Program Description

“A medicine that embodies an acceptance of death would represent a great change in the common conception, and might set the stage for viewing the care of dying people not as an afterthought when all else has failed, but as one of the ends of medicine. The goal of a peaceful death should be as much a part of the purpose of medicine, as the promotion of good health.” This quote from the medical ethicist, Daniel Callahan, serves as the foundation for this review of contemporary palliative care and hospice issues by Dr. Bruce Ellsweig. In this program, Dr. Ellsweig compares palliative and end-of-life care with the curative model of medicine. Recommendations for identifying patients who may be candidates for palliative care and/or hospice include eligibility criteria for the Medicare Hospice Benefit. A multidisciplinary approach to management with early and sustained communications between the patient, caregivers, family, and friends is critical to optimize end-of-life care and is stressed throughout the program.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for hospice physicians, internists, hospitalists, primary care physicians, surgeons, psychiatrists, and other interested healthcare professionals. 

Program Description

Hospital inpatients are sicker today than they were in past decades and treatment regimens are more technologically complex than ever before. These realities, combined with pressures on hospitals to control costs, increase efficiency, improve patient outcomes, and reduce medical errors are changing the nature of inpatient care. One strategy that is increasingly being used to adapt to these changes is the establishment of hospital medicine programs, which feature physicians who are called “hospitalists.” In this video Dr. Alpesh Amin reviews the evolution of the field of hospital medicine, provides demographic information on hospitalists, and explores their practice models, education, and training. He also examines the value hospitalists bring to health care, discusses policy recommendations that could further define the value of hospitalists in improving the delivery of healthcare, and concludes with a discussion on integrating hospitalists into the hospital team.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information

Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, and surgeons. 

Program Description
The electronic health record (EHR) has evolved to a point where widespread utilization is now a possibility. The implications for improving patient safety are significant. In this video discussion, Dr. David Krusch explores several keycapabilities with regard to EHRs including clinical decision support, computerized physician order entry, and follow-up reminders. By providing accessibility and a global view of all matters pertaining to the “whole patient” – electronic health records can lead to reduced medical error, enhanced communications, and potentially improved patient outcomes.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals with an interest in improving patient safety.

Program Description
Controversy in diagnosing death has a long history, but the essential difficulties have not changed for hundreds of years. A major source of confusion in understanding death is the mixing of the definition of death—a decision about when life has ended—with criteria and tests used to assess when death has occurred. What is it that shifts human beings from alive to dead—lack of sentience? Lack of personhood? Cessation of all spontaneous biological activity? Departure of the soul? In this video, Dr. James Kirkpatrick revisits the concept of death. He traces the historical difficulties in diagnosing death, reviews the current controversies and criteria—cardiopulmonary versus neurological—for determining death, discusses the legal and ethical issues surrounding organ harvesting, and explores the inherent problems with making the diagnosis of death a matter of personal choice.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for internists, hospitalists, emergency medicine physicians, family physicians, hosptial physicians, oncologists, surgeons, and any other healthcare professionals.

Program Description
The management of the HIV-infected drug user poses a considerable challenge for clinicians. These patients often have medical, psychiatric, and social comorbidities that adversely influence each other and the overall clinical outcomes. Furthermore, individuals with HIV and chemical dependency have a high incidence of nonadherence to their drug regimens, which greatly diminishes the benefits of treatment. In this video, Dr. Altice reviews the multiple factors that contribute to medication nonadherence in this population, discusses interventions for optimizing adherence and improving clinical outcomes, and offers strategies for integrating HIV and addiction therapy. He also discusses novel approaches that use directly administered antiretroviral therapy (DAART) to facilitate medication adherence.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for primary care physicians, internists, infectious disease specialists, and HIV specialists.

Asthma is one of the most common diseases of childhood, with a prevalence rate of 5.4%in the pediatric population, accounting for 17% of pediatric encounters in US emergency departments. Although there is no known cure for asthma, advances in scientific understanding of the disease's underlying mechanisms have produced treatment tools and management strategies that can improve the health of children with asthma. However, the variability in patient responses to asthma therapies makes a single treatment strategy particularly challenging. In this video, Dr. Jill Baren presents an evidence-based discussion about some of the controversies in the management of pediatric asthma, including the use of metered-dose inhalers versus nebulizers, levalbuterol versus albuterol, the role of ipratropium, and the use of inhaled corticosteroids in acute asthma. In addition, she reviews novel or uncommon therapeutic interventions, such as the use of bi-level positive airway pressure (BiPAP) and heliox therapy.

(30 minutes)

Credit Information
Up to 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™

This activity is designed for pediatricians, primary care physicians, internists, emergency medicine physicians, hospitalists, and other healthcare professionals involved in the care of pediatric patients who present with asthma.