Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Oct 2015
Resident transfers from aged care facilities to emergency departments: Can they be avoided?
Residents from aged care facilities make up a considerable proportion of ED presentations. There is evidence that many residents transferred from aged care facilities to EDs could be managed by primary care services. The present study aimed to describe the characteristics of residents transferred from residential aged care facilities to EDs, and to evaluate the appropriateness and cost of these presentations. ⋯ Many resident transfers might have been avoided with better primary care services in place. Future strategies to improve resident care might include aged care staff skill mix and the availability of outreach or primary care services.
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Emerg Med Australas · Oct 2015
Assessing the damage control resuscitation: Development, drivers and direction.
Damage control resuscitation (DCR) has become a more widely adopted acute management strategy over the past decade. A cornerstone of this strategy is the performance of an initial limited surgical intervention for the control of active bleeding and contamination. ⋯ This damage control surgery itself is completed judiciously to allow a period of resuscitative stabilisation before later definitive surgical solutions. This discussion describes the three further principles of DCR and then explores the rationale and drivers behind the development of this approach.