Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Apr 2015
Should we change chest compression providers every 2 min when performing one-handed chest compressions?
Because the one-handed chest compression (OHCC) technique uses one hand, unlike the two-handed chest compression (THCC) technique, compression depth might be reduced more rapidly in OHCC than THCC. The present study was conducted to determine whether compression depth was affected within 2 min after the start of OHCC in a simulated in-hospital paediatric arrest model. ⋯ Compression depth was decreased significantly from 30 s onwards after starting the OHCC technique using a simulated paediatric arrest model. The results of the present study suggest that future strategies should be established to prevent a decrease in compression depth within 1 min during OHCC.
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Emerg Med Australas · Apr 2015
Low acuity and general practice-type presentations to emergency departments: A rural perspective.
To estimate the number of general practice (GP)-type patients attending a rural ED and provide a comparative rural estimate to a metropolitan study. ⋯ The proportion of GP-type presentations identified using the four methods ranged from 15% to 69%. The results suggest that triage status and self-referral are not reliable indicators of low acuity in this rural area. In rural areas with a shortage of GPs, it is likely that many people appropriately self-refer to ED because they cannot access a GP. The results indicate that the ACEM method might be most useful for identifying GP-type patients in rural ED. However, this requires validation in other regions of Australia.