Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2025
Gender equity in authorship of emergency medicine publications in Australasia.
To evaluate gender authorship trends in the official journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM), Emergency Medicine Australasia (EMA). ⋯ The emergency medicine community in Australasia must continue to tackle existing gender disparities which exist in our specialty. A creative and active strategy on the part of publishers, editors, academics and authors is needed to redress this balance.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2025
The use and impact of pathology tests in emergency department patients with mental health-related complaints: A cross sectional study.
To evaluate the use and impact of pathology tests in patients who present to the ED with mental health-related complaints. The primary objective is to measure the proportion of patients undergoing pathology tests and assess whether these tests trigger a change in management. ⋯ Pathology tests should be reserved for patients with high-risk features and based on clinical assessment. Strategic use of pathology tests could avoid unnecessary delays and costs, enhancing patient care in mental health-related ED presentations.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2025
Observational StudyEvaluation of older patients with minor blunt head trauma to identify those who do not have clinically important traumatic brain injury and can be safely managed without cranial computed tomography.
Our primary aim was to identify a low-risk subgroup of older adults (aged 65 and older) presenting to ED with minor head trauma which can be safely managed without a cranial CT (cCT). ⋯ Alert, haemodynamically stable, older ED adults with suspected head trauma had a low incidence of ciTBI in the present study. Abnormal physical examination findings were consistently present in patients with ciTBI. Shared decision-making prior to cCT may be the pragmatic way ahead in the management of this patient cohort, especially among those from RACFs.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2025
Effect of case identification changes on pre-hospital intubation performance indicators in an Australian helicopter emergency medical service.
A 45-min interval from injury to intubation has been proposed as a performance indicator for severe trauma patient management. In the Sydney pre-hospital system a previous change in case identification systems was associated with activation delay. We aimed to determine if this also decreased the proportion of patients intubated within this benchmark. ⋯ Time from emergency call to intubation was significantly shorter in the HEMS screening period where all non-trapped cases less than 50 km distant were intubated within the 45-min benchmark. There was no distance where intubation within 45 min could be assured for non-trapped patients in the central control period due to dispatch delays.
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Emerg Med Australas · Feb 2025
Observational StudyWhat they did next: Using follow-up phone calls to investigate health care access patterns of patients who take their own leave.
The purpose of the present study was to use telephone follow-up (TFU) to investigate the actions taken by patients after they took their own leave (TOL) from an ED, with a focus on priority groups who are at risk of experiencing health inequity. These included people experiencing homelessness (EH), people with a low socioeconomic status by index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage (IRSD) and First Nations people. The primary outcome was being seen by a general practitioner (GP) within 2 days of the TOL event. The utility of the TFU was also examined. ⋯ Patients EH were less likely to receive GP care within 2 days of TOL. Improving the access and acceptability of health care in these priority groups is important for achieving health equity.