Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Best-practice pain management in the emergency department: A cluster-randomised, controlled, intervention trial.
We aimed to provide 'adequate analgesia' (which decreases the pain score by ≥2 and to <4 [0-10 scale]) and determine the effect on patient satisfaction. ⋯ The 'adequate analgesia' intervention significantly improved patient satisfaction. It provides a simple and efficient target in the pursuit of best-practice ED pain management.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Management of mental health patients in Victorian emergency departments: A 10 year follow-up study.
Despite efforts to restructure mental health (MH) services across Victoria, the social and economic burden of MH illness continues to grow. This study compares MH presentations to EDs with a study undertaken 10 years earlier. ⋯ Despite increasing MH-related presentations, changes in ED practice have allowed improvements in delivery of care through a shortened ED length of stay and the virtual elimination of very long stays over 24 h. However, there continues to be significant variability in management and performance across hospital sites. Identifying which interventions lead to standout site performance, and subsequent application more broadly, may improve future ED delivery of care.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Applying palliative care principles and practice to emergency medicine.
Only recently has the potential (unmet) palliative care (PC) workload in the ED been recognised. While confident in PC symptom management, we underestimate the role of a palliative approach in non-cancer diagnoses and seek education in areas such as individual patient care pathways, ethical and legal issues and difficult conversations at the end of life. PC is best introduced early for a range of life-limiting cancer and non-cancer diagnoses. ⋯ This patient-centred, rather than disease-centred approach, is the essence of PC, and one that is easily incorporated into emergency practice. PC and disease-specific treatments can comfortably coexist, and with meticulous symptom management, may actually prolong life. PC is everyone's business, and emergency medicine needs to be part of it.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Adolescent presentations with alcohol intoxication to the emergency department at Joondalup Health Campus in 2013.
To document the number of adolescents aged 16 years and under presenting to the ED at Joondalup Health Campus (JHC) with problems related primarily to alcohol intoxication, and document information about these presentations. ⋯ Adolescents requiring review in an ED for alcohol intoxication are most often brought in by ambulance or police in the late evening or early morning. They are most likely to have high BALs and a significant proportion will have a GCS <14.