House GOP members Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) recently made alarming and misleading statements about American emergency departments’ role in U.S. healthcare.
With increasing attention to the actual cost of delivering care, return-on-investment calculations take on new significance. Boarded patients in the emergency department (ED) are harmful to clinical care and have significant financial opportunity costs. We hypothesize that investment in an admissions holding unit for admitted ED patients not only captures opportunity cost but also significantly lowers direct cost of care.
Supporting an “ultrasound-first” approach to evaluating renal colic in the emergency department (ED) remains important for improving patient care and decreasing healthcare costs. Our primary objective was to compare emergency physician (EP) ultrasound to computed tomography (CT) detection of hydronephrosis severity in patients with suspected renal colic.
Older adults use the emergency department (ED) at high rates, including for illnesses that could be managed by their primary care providers (PCP). Policymakers have implemented barriers and incentives, often financial, to try to modify use patterns but with limited success. This study aims to understand the factors that influence older adults’ decision to obtain acute illness care from the ED rather than from their PCPs.
Emergency department (ED) crowding is associated with detrimental effects on ED quality of care. Triage liaison providers (TLP) have been used to mitigate the effects of crowding. Prior studies have evaluated attending physicians and advanced practice providers as TLPs, with limited data evaluating resident physicians as TLPs. This study compares operational performance outcomes between resident and attending physicians as TLPs.
Over 300,000 patients in the United States sustain low-trauma fragility hip fractures annually. Multidisciplinary geriatric fracture programs (GFP) including early, multimodal pain management reduce morbidity and mortality. Our overall goal was to determine the effects of a GFP on the emergency department (ED) pain management of geriatric fragility hip fractures.
Chest pain is a common emergency department (ED) presentation accounting for 8–10 million visits per year in the United States. Physician-level factors such as risk tolerance are predictive of admission rates. The recent advent of accelerated diagnostic pathways and ED observation units may have an impact in reducing variation in admission rates on the individual physician level.
Less than half of patients with a chest pain history indicative of acute coronary syndrome have a diagnostic electrocardiogram (ECG) on initial presentation to the emergency department. The physician must dissect the ECG for elusive, but perilous, characteristics that are often missed by machine analysis.
Emergency physicians (EP) are uniquely suited to provide care in crises as a result of their broad training, ability to work quickly and effectively in high-pressure, austere settings, and their inherent flexibility. While emergency medicine training is helpful to support the needs of crisis-affected and displaced populations, it is not in itself sufficient. In this article we review what an EP should carefully consider prior to deployment.
Our primary objective in this study was to evaluate the feasibility of a screening survey to identify adult victims of sex trafficking in the ED. We also compared the sensitivity of emergency physician concern and a screening survey for identifying sex trafficking victims in the ED and determined the most effective question(s) for identifying adult victims of sex trafficking.
The aim of the study was to determine if a medical degree disparity exists between those who successfully receive an EM R01 grant and those who do not, and to determine the publication characteristics of those recipients.
Air-medical critical care providers are frequently called upon to provide advanced airway management to our critically ill patients. The majority of these cases involve the transport of patients who have been intubated with standard endotracheal tubes (ETT).
The number of community paramedic (CP) programs has expanded to mitigate the impact of increased patient usage on emergency services. However, it has not been determined to what extent emergency medical services (EMS) professionals would be willing to participate in this model of care. With this project, we sought to evaluate the perceptions of EMS professionals toward the concept of a CP program.
The emergency medical evaluation of psychiatric patients presenting to United States emergency departments (ED), usually termed “medical clearance,” often varies between EDs. A task force of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry (AAEP), consisting of physicians from emergency medicine, physicians from psychiatry and a psychologist, was convened to form consensus recommendations for the medical evaluation of psychiatric patients presenting to U.S.EDs.
Effective strategies for managing acute behavioural disturbances (ABDs) within emergency departments (EDs) are needed given their rising occurrence and negative impact on safety, psychological wellbeing, and staff turnover. Our objective was to systematically review the efficacy of strategies for ABD management within EDs that involved changes to environment, architecture, policy and practice.
Endotracheal intubation (ETI) in the prehospital setting poses unique challenges where multiple ETI attempts are associated with adverse patient outcomes. Early identification of difficult ETI cases will allow providers to tailor airway-management efforts to minimize complications associated with ETI.
The California Prehospital Antifibrinolytic Therapy (Cal-PAT) study seeks to assess the safety and impact on patient mortality of tranexamic acid (TXA) administration in cases of trauma-induced hemorrhagic shock. The current study further aimed to assess the feasibility of prehospital TXA administration by paramedics within the framework of North American emergency medicine standards and protocols.
Necrotizing fasciitis (NF) is an uncommon but rapidly progressive infection that results in gross morbidity and mortality if not treated in its early stages. This study analyzed the ability of the LRINEC score to accurately rule out NF in patients who were confirmed to have cellulitis, as well as the capability to differentiate cellulitis from NF.
Our goal was to develop and validate an index to predict in-hospital mortality in older adults after non-traumatic emergency department (ED) intubations.
ALiEM EM Match Advice is a web series hosted on the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine website. This article serves as a user’s guide to the series, including a timeline for viewing each episode, brief summaries of the panel discussions, and reflection questions for discussion between students and their faculty advisors.
A proper understanding of study design is essential to creating successful studies. This is also important when reading or peer reviewing publications. In this article, we aimed to identify and summarize key papers that would be helpful for faculty members interested in learning more about study design in medical education research.
Competency-based medical education (CBME) presents a paradigm shift in medical training. This outcome-based education movement has triggered substantive changes across the globe. Since this transition is only beginning, many faculty members may not have experience with CBME nor a solid foundation in the grounding literature.
Peer review is a key component of academic publishing, and aims to provide rigor and relevance to the publishing process.This paper is a narrative review that highlights some important literature that may assist junior educators who are seeking to learn more about the peer-review process.
The acquisition of knowledge was previously limited by one’s access to experts, instructors or textbooks, but now learners have access to resources from around the globe. Learners can choose from digital textbooks, open-access journals, online encyclopedias, podcasts, blogs, free open-access medical education (FOAM), massive open online courses (MOOCs), the Khan academy, and TED talks.
Pain is one of the most common complaints in emergency departments (ED) nationwide. The perception of pain in others is, therefore, an important component of patient assessment and treatment. There are difficulties in studying pain since it is subjective, which raises the question of what is a clinically significant change in pain.
Older, chronically ill patients with limited health literacy are often under-engaged in managing their health and turn to the emergency department (ED) for healthcare needs. We tested the impact of an ED-initiated coaching intervention on patient engagement and follow-up doctor visits in this high-risk population. We also explored patients’ care-seeking decisions.
