Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2021
Discordance between patient-reported and actual emergency department pain management.
To determine patient knowledge of the nature of their pain management in the ED. ⋯ Patients are often unaware of the nature of their pain management. They are most often unaware of management other than analgesia. Patients with chest pain and lower triage pain scores had the least knowledge of their pain management.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2021
Providing emergency medical care without consent: How the 'emergency principle' in Australian law protects against claims of trespass.
In a medical emergency, the usual requirement to obtain consent before giving treatment does not apply. This exception to the general rule on consent to medical treatment is known as the 'emergency principle'. ⋯ For example, whether a practitioner would ever be obliged to seek consent from a substitute decision-maker before providing emergency treatment is not clearly or consistently explained. We suggest the law should be clarified.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2021
Assessment of the availability and utility of the paramedic record in the emergency department.
Clinical handover between pre-hospital ambulance service and the ED is important for patient safety and quality care. This study assessed the availability and utility of the paramedic record to ED clinicians in their patient assessment. ⋯ The information in the paramedic record was found to be useful to ED clinicians when it was available. Increasing the availability of the paramedic record for ED clinical assessment may be an opportunity to improve patient safety and flow.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2021
Implementing a Pandemic Roster in a Specialty Emergency Department - Challenges & Benefits.
To create a roster that eliminated unnecessary cross-staff exposure to ensure the hospital had sufficient staff to run the ED in the event that a group of staff are affected by COVID-19. This roster was aimed at providing staff with 'manageable shift lengths, down-time between shifts, regular breaks and access to refreshments' as dictated by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. ⋯ A pandemic roster plan to minimise staff exposure from other colleagues during a pandemic was possible. This helps to ensure an adequate workforce in the unfortunate event a staff contracts the disease leading to other close contact staff requiring isolation or succumbing to the same illness.
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To describe Australian ED workload over the period 2017-2020 using data from twice annual Access Block Point Prevalence Studies, and to identify any impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. ⋯ Occupancy increased by more than demand 2017-2019, with some decrease in 2020: in June presentations were 12.7% lower than 2019, in September back to the normal range outside Victorian and Major Paediatric Referral hospitals. Future research needs to consider locality, role delineation and work practice change in comparing ED pandemic responses.