Archives

Chart Smart: A Need for Documentation and Billing Education Among Emergency Medicine Residents?

The healthcare chart is becoming ever more complex, serving clinicians, patients, third party payers, regulators, and even medicolegal parties. The purpose of this study was to identify our emergency medicine (EM) resident and attending physicians’ current knowledge and attitudes about billing and documentation practices. We hypothesized that resident and attending physicians would identify billing and documentation as an area in which residents need further education.

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Procedural Skills Training During Emergency Medicine Residency: Are We Teaching the Right Things?

The Residency Review Committee training requirements for emergency medicine residents (EM) are defined by consensus panels, with specific topics abstracted from lists of patient complaints and diagnostic codes. The relevance of specific curricular topics to actual practice has not been studied. We compared residency graduates’ self-assessed preparation during training to importance in practice for a variety of EM procedural skills.

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Clitoral Priapism with No Known Risk Factors

Clitoral priapism is a rare condition that is associated with an extended duration of clitoral erection due to local engorgement of clitoral tissue resulting in pain. Although the pathophysiology is not completely understood, it has been associated with specific classes of medications, diseases that alter clitoral blood flow or others associated with small to large vessel disease. We present a case report of a 26-year-old patient who developed clitoral priapism without a clear medication or disease related etiology. The patient was treated with opiates, imipramine, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication, and local ice packs. She recovered uneventfully.

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Critical Care

Delayed Complications of Emergency Airway Management: A Study of 533 Emergency Department Intubations

Airway management is a critical procedure performed frequently in emergency departments (EDs). Previous studies have evaluated the complications associated with this procedure but have focused only on the immediate complications. The purpose of this study is to determine the incidence and nature of delayed complications of tracheal intubation performed in the ED at an academic center where intubations are performed by emergency physicians (EPs).

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Contact Information

WestJEM/ Department of Emergency Medicine
UC Irvine Health

3800 W Chapman Ave Ste 3200
Orange, CA 92868, USA
Phone: 1-714-456-6389
Email: editor@westjem.org

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WestJEM
ISSN: 1936-900X
e-ISSN: 1936-9018

CPC-EM
ISSN: 2474-252X

Our Philosophy

Emergency Medicine is a specialty which closely reflects societal challenges and consequences of public policy decisions. The emergency department specifically deals with social injustice, health and economic disparities, violence, substance abuse, and disaster preparedness and response. This journal focuses on how emergency care affects the health of the community and population, and conversely, how these societal challenges affect the composition of the patient population who seek care in the emergency department. The development of better systems to provide emergency care, including technology solutions, is critical to enhancing population health.