Metkus: Should we examine our ICU patients? The subtle art of physical exams in the ICU

Summary: Today we are fortunate to have convinced Dr. Thomas Stephen Metkus to cross the interstate and join us for CCP rounds here at the University of Maryland. Dr. Metkus is an assistant professor of cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine whose research focuses on using cardiac physiology for risk stratification and therapeutics in non-cardiac critical illness (mainly sepsis & ARDS). Dr. Metkus started his career with an undergraduate degree from Boston University College of Engineering, moving down 95 to collect a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Keeping the Ivy League streak going he went onto to complete a medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and then a fellowship at both Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Fresh off publication of a highly lauded article focusing on bedside diagnoses in the ICU, today he is gracious enough to take the reigns of the late/great Osler and discuss why physical exam in the ICU is NOT a dead art!