Applying Medical Calculators
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When NOT to apply a score
Always know if the score applies to YOUR patient.
Some wise person once said, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” You’ll have myriad tests at your disposal to order with one click, and almost 400 scores to choose from on MDCalc, but knowing when and when not to use these tools is what makes a smart doctor.
Scores on MDCalc make it clear when (and when not) to use them. It’s basically the inclusion and exclusion criteria from the study, summarized by our expert contributors who are doctors that use the score every day.
Above all else, use common sense!
Pro-tip: in addition to the “When to Use” tab, the blue Instructions box at the top of some calcs includes the most important stuff you need to know before calculating a score.
Blind them with science! (Science… science…)
Believe it or not, there are some things your attendings don’t know. New evidence is published every day, but there’s a lot of noise among the signal. Got a patient presenting with syncope who you want to risk-stratify after doing a basic workup? Search for “syncope” and find the Canadian Syncope Risk Score, and in ~2 minutes you can calculate your individual patient’s risk for a serious adverse event, and in the Evidence section, see that it’s based on a Canadian prospective cohort study of about 4,000 syncope patients in 6 EDs, and that “serious adverse events” included death, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, and others.
When NOT to apply a score
Always know if the score applies to YOUR patient.
Some wise person once said, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” You’ll have myriad tests at your disposal to order with one click, and almost 400 scores to choose from on MDCalc, but knowing when and when not to use these tools is what makes a smart doctor.
Scores on MDCalc make it clear when (and when not) to use them. It’s basically the inclusion and exclusion criteria from the study, summarized by our expert contributors who are doctors that use the score every day.
Above all else, use common sense!
Pro-tip: in addition to the “When to Use” tab, the blue Instructions box at the top of some calcs includes the most important stuff you need to know before calculating a score.
Blind them with science! (Science… science…)
Believe it or not, there are some things your attendings don’t know. New evidence is published every day, but there’s a lot of noise among the signal. Got a patient presenting with syncope who you want to risk-stratify after doing a basic workup? Search for “syncope” and find the Canadian Syncope Risk Score, and in ~2 minutes you can calculate your individual patient’s risk for a serious adverse event, and in the Evidence section, see that it’s based on a Canadian prospective cohort study of about 4,000 syncope patients in 6 EDs, and that “serious adverse events” included death, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, and others.
When NOT to apply a score
Always know if the score applies to YOUR patient.
Some wise person once said, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” You’ll have myriad tests at your disposal to order with one click, and almost 400 scores to choose from on MDCalc, but knowing when and when not to use these tools is what makes a smart doctor.
Scores on MDCalc make it clear when (and when not) to use them. It’s basically the inclusion and exclusion criteria from the study, summarized by our expert contributors who are doctors that use the score every day.
Above all else, use common sense!
Pro-tip: in addition to the “When to Use” tab, the blue Instructions box at the top of some calcs includes the most important stuff you need to know before calculating a score.
Blind them with science! (Science… science…)
Believe it or not, there are some things your attendings don’t know. New evidence is published every day, but there’s a lot of noise among the signal. Got a patient presenting with syncope who you want to risk-stratify after doing a basic workup? Search for “syncope” and find the Canadian Syncope Risk Score, and in ~2 minutes you can calculate your individual patient’s risk for a serious adverse event, and in the Evidence section, see that it’s based on a Canadian prospective cohort study of about 4,000 syncope patients in 6 EDs, and that “serious adverse events” included death, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, and others.
