Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
-
Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2018
Deliberate clinical inertia: Using meta-cognition to improve decision-making.
Deliberate clinical inertia is the art of doing nothing as a positive response. To be able to apply this concept, individual clinicians need to specifically focus on their clinical decision-making. ⋯ Strategies to mitigate common biases are outlined, with an emphasis on reversing a 'more is better' culture towards more temperate, critical thinking. To incorporate such an approach in medical curricula and in clinical practice, institutional endorsement and support is required.
-
Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2018
Emergency demand, repeat and frequent presentations by older patients in metropolitan Melbourne: A retrospective cohort study using routinely collected hospital data.
To describe patterns for potentially avoidable general practice (PAGP)-type and non-PAGP-type ED presentations by older patients during 2008 and 2012. ⋯ The rate of repeat and frequent PAGP-type presentations by older people decreased in 2012 compared with 2008, suggesting that initiatives implemented to reduce avoidable presentations may have had an effect. However, an increase in the rate of frequent non-PAGP-type presentations, predominately for acute exacerbation of cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, has important implications for planning future healthcare delivery; hence, the importance of initiatives such as the Health Care Home.