Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2022
Clean the skin: Reducing blood culture contamination in the emergency department.
To determine whether blood culture contamination (BCC) rates could be decreased in the ED by an educational programme. ⋯ This educational intervention focusing on skin clean time did not significantly decrease BCC rates in a setting of an already low (<3%) BCC rate.
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This qualitative study explores whether Australian mass casualty and disaster plans explicitly acknowledge or implicitly draw upon ethical principles. ⋯ In Australian government documents for mass casualty and disaster management, although ethics is definitely considered, the ethical principles on which decisions are made are rarely explicit. Mass casualty and disaster decision-making could be improved by making the ethical basis for decision-making clear, transparent and comprehensively reasoned.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2022
From little things, big things grow: An exploratory analysis of the national cost of peripheral intravenous catheter insertion in Australian adult emergency care.
To estimate the total economic impact of peripheral intravenous catheter (PIVC) or cannula insertion and use in adult Australian EDs, including those cannulas that remain unused for therapeutic purposes. ⋯ The figures developed in the present study represent an important educational opportunity to encourage thoughtful consideration of all interventions, no matter how small. ED cannula insertion represents a large economic and health cost to Australia's health system, many of which remain unused. There are no national data sets that record complications associated with PIVCs and we highlight the urgent need for improved data.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2022
Emergency Department adult presentations from the COVID-19 hotel quarantine program in Victoria, Australia: a retrospective cohort study of admissions and presenting complaints.
The present study aims to describe presentations to the designated ED from the Victorian COVID-19 hotel quarantine program. ⋯ The study demonstrates that the number of ED presentations from quarantine was low (<1 presentation/day). COVID Quarantine Victoria and Alfred Health put significant resources into the program to allow most returned international travellers to be safely cared for within a hotel and thus reduce the burden on the public hospital system.