148 episodes listed below
Skeptical evidence for emergency care.
The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine is a clinical evidence podcast built around emergency medicine, critical appraisal, and practical bedside judgment. Recent episodes move from febrile infants and geriatric emergency care to trauma guidelines, respiratory failure, antihistamines, and medical education.
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The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine is a long-running emergency medicine podcast built around clinical skepticism, evidence appraisal, and practical bedside translation. It is not a headlines show. It slows down around the evidence. Recent episodes test questions that matter in real emergency departments: whether well-appearing febrile infants need lumbar punctures, how geriatric emergency guidelines have changed, what ATLS 11th edition means for trauma care, and how high-flow nasal oxygen compares with non-invasive ventilation in acute respiratory failure. The conversations are clinically dense, but they are rarely cold. Hosts and guest skeptics talk through study populations, outcomes, bias, conflicts of interest, and the limits of guidelines while still sounding like colleagues in a workroom. That balance gives the show its identity. It can scrutinize GRADE evidence and still make room for karaoke, pubcast banter, Bon Jovi references, and a joke about an N of 1. Pediatric episodes bring the stakes close to the bedside, especially when fever, urine, blood, spinal fluid, and meningitis risk are on the table. Geriatric episodes widen the frame to systems, delirium, guideline development, and the needs of older adults in emergency care. Critical care conversations ask whether trial results actually fit the patients clinicians are seeing now, especially when COVID-era data shape the evidence base. The show also looks beyond single papers through SGEM Extra episodes on education, Oxford training, communication, and people who challenge established thinking. Its recurring question is simple and demanding: what should change after reading the evidence? The answer is usually conditional. It depends on the patients, the setting, the outcomes, and the quality of the data. That is the appeal. The show respects evidence without pretending it is cleaner than it is. It respects clinicians without letting habit stand in for proof. For listeners who live near the edge of uncertainty, that posture feels honest.
Made for: Emergency physicians, trainees, educators, pediatric and geriatric clinicians, critical care practitioners, and evidence-based medicine listeners who want clinically relevant appraisal rather than surface-level summaries.
What sets it apart: The show combines structured critical appraisal with bedside translation, repeatedly asking how study design, bias, conflicts, guidelines, and patient communication should affect real emergency care.
Meet 'em, greet 'em, treat 'em and street 'em
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Clinical evidence becomes more usable here because study limitations, bedside consequences and patient communication all receive serious scrutiny.
Ken Milne and Dennis Wren turn emergency-medicine research into a disciplined conversation about what clinicians can reasonably do with it. Episodes move through study design, bias, funding, conflicts of interest and applicability before returning to bedside decisions.
A clinical trial gets cross-examined; you get the bedside consequences without the journal-club anesthesia.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Viral findings, initial tests, and the decision about lumbar puncture in a febrile infant.
When does a fever in a well-appearing infant call for a lumbar puncture? Dennis Wren and guest skeptic Margarita Ramos work through what a runny nose, a documented viral infection, and urine and blood tests can tell clinicians about serious bacterial infection.
Milne and Shenvi explain how GRADE shapes geriatric emergency guidance and exposes gaps in the evidence.
Ken Milne and Dr. Christina Shenvi look at how the Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines 2.0 group weighed evidence and turned it into recommendations.
Milne and Spiegel examine RENOVATE's respiratory support finding, patient mix, and financial tie.
Ken Milne and Rory Spiegel examine how high-flow nasal oxygen compares with non-invasive ventilation for adults hospitalized with acute respiratory failure. They focus on RENOVATE, which randomized 1,800 patients across 33 hospitals in Brazil.
An Oxford pub conversation about research ambitions, AI's limits and asking for advice.
Back in Oxford, Ken Milne recalls a fellowship at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine that he says changed his career. Recorded in a pub, the conversation has room for odd turns: a grip-strength study comparing orthopedic surgeons and anaesthetists comes up alongside the work…
Ken Milne and Terry O'Reilly discuss what it takes to keep an idea alive through resistance.
Ken Milne talks with storyteller and longtime advertising professional Terry O'Reilly about Against the Grain, O'Reilly's book about people who kept pursuing ideas despite criticism and losses to their livelihoods. All in the Family gives them a concrete example.
Anaphylaxis observation, discharge decisions, and the conversation with families.
How long should a child remain in the emergency department after treatment for anaphylaxis? Dennis Wren and pediatric emergency medicine fellow Cameron Brissett consider a study of 5,641 children, focusing on biphasic and persistent reactions and on how often another dose of…
Practical anesthesia safety, one case at a time.
Surgery, mentorship, and life in training.
Clear conversations on bones, joints, and recovery.
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SGEM #508 examines whether the updated PCARN rule can safely reduce lumbar punctures in well-appearing febrile infants 28 days old or younger.
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Ken Milne and Christina Shenvi discuss the Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines 2.0 on March 23, 2026, and frame them as the first emergency medicine subspecialty to fully adopt GRADE methodology.
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The Skeptic's Guide to Emergency Medicine episode on "Close Enough for ARF" centers on RENOVATE, a March 2025 JAMA trial comparing high-flow nasal oxygen and non-invasive ventilation across five acute respiratory failure groups.
Melanie Golomb says living evidence synthesis needs a “human in the loop,” even with AI and ChatGPT.
Ken Milne interviews Terry O’Reilly, host of Under the Influence, about Against the Grain and people who challenge established practice despite rejection.
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This episode discusses whether nasal high flow or standard care is better for pediatric intubation, featuring a case of a two-year-old in respiratory distress.
Emergency physician Ken Milne and guest Andrew Martin discuss concerns about acetaminophen's link to neurodevelopmental disorders and Florida's vaccine mandate changes.
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