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Today was day one of ATLS.  A friend assured me that I already know more about trauma than I’m going to learn in this class; I actually paged through the textbook and there’s one thing I didn’t know in there:  how to do a DPL.  However, I also caught this little gem:

Ohm’s law (V=IxR) applied to cardiovascular physiology states that

And that’s exactly where my brain stopped.  That sort of metaphor mixing might be OK in other settings, but when you’re trying to be precise and scientific, you shouldn’t write things that are not accurate:  by definition, Ohm’s law applies to electricity.  If they had emphasized the fact that they were attempting an analogy, I might have let it slide.

The latest edition of the text is copyrighted 2008, but the appendix on tetanus immunization doesn’t have the latest (2006) recommendations.

Overall, though, there really isn’t a whole lot in the book that isn’t taught in the prehospital trauma classes (PHTLS and ITLS).  Take out all the discussion of physician-level procedures, blood tests, and imaging, and all that’s left is a PHTLS curriculum with more rigorous testing standards.