Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Use of a telenursing triage service by Victorian parents attending the emergency department for their child's lower urgency condition.
The Victorian Nurse-On-Call (NOC) service has been in use for over 8 years, though little research has been conducted investigating the service. The present study aimed to explore whether parents in Victoria presenting with their child to the ED for lower urgency conditions use the NOC before ED arrival and whether the advice given impacts their decision to attend the ED. ⋯ The findings of our study show that use and awareness of NOC is low in parents attending the ED for their child's lower urgency condition. The success of NOC in the goal of deferring non-urgent conditions from presenting to the ED appears limited. Telenursing triage services in Australia should consider assessment of their algorithms to increase the likelihood that where appropriate, lower urgency conditions are directed to primary care services rather than the ED.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Survey of point of care ultrasound usage in emergency medicine by Vietnamese physicians.
Emergency medicine (EM) is rapidly developing as a specialty in Vietnam. Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) is currently taught as part of formal EM curriculums though limited literature exists to describe current POCUS usage in EDs in Vietnam. A survey was developed to understand current POCUS utilisation and guide future training efforts. ⋯ Regular access to ultrasound machines increases the frequency of POCUS usage in EDs in Vietnam. POCUS training was not as clearly associated with POCUS usage as those without formal training were equally likely to use POCUS as those with formal training. No single POCUS application stood out as strongly preferred by physicians in this survey.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Dispatcher-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol improves diagnosis and resuscitation recommendations for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Despite recent efforts, most people are not trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which has a major impact on survival following cardiac arrest (CA). We have set up a dispatcher-assisted CPR protocol at our call centre, based on international guidelines issued in 2010. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of this protocol on CA diagnosis and quantity of recommendations given by telephone dispatchers to untrained witnesses. ⋯ Implementation of a dispatcher-assisted CPR protocol was efficient in improving both CA diagnosis and CPR recommendations given to untrained witnesses for out-of-hospital CA with a very short time of dispatcher training. It is a simple and efficacious measure, at no additional cost and with the promises of improving prognosis following cardiac arrest in a centre not equipped with computerised dispatcher support programmes.