Hello, med students. My name is Zach Olson, and thank you for downloading this episode of the EM

Clerkship Podcast. This week we're talking about another big topic, but this one's less important for your test,

but it's really, really important clinically. Today we're talking about dental pain.

So just a personal story. My wife has a huge sweet tooth. I remember we were watching American

Idol one night, and she's eating her bowl of ice cream, and she starts to hold her jaw,

and she stops eating her ice cream. And I knew that something was wrong at that point.

And this is going to happen to you too.

Your family members expect you to fix everything.

So she's all like, Zach, my tooth hurts, help me.

And I had no idea what to do.

Middle of the night.

And so I pretty much faked it.

I got out my cell phone light.

I looked in her mouth, didn't see anything, and I went, oh, this looks bad. You need to go to the dentist.

And then all the way through med school, in my ED rotations, and even residency, I said the

exact same thing every time a patient comes in with dental pain.

Ah, this looks bad.

You need to go to the dentist because I didn't know this stuff.

And this is really good news for you because lots of your peers aren't going to know this stuff.

Some of your attendings don't even know this

stuff very well, but you will have these cases. So you have the potential to sound really smart

if you can just articulate your way through them. So let's go here. Let's make you sound smart

...