Internal and emergency medicine
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Checklists can improve adherence to standardized procedures and minimize human error. We aimed to test if implementation of a checklist was feasible and effective in enhancing patient care in an emergency department handling internal medicine cases. We developed four critical event checklists and confronted volunteer teams with a series of four simulated emergency scenarios. ⋯ All participants rated the checklist as useful and 22 of 24 participants would use the checklist in real life. Checklist use had no influence on CPR quality. The use of context-specific checklists showed a statistically significant influence on team performance and simulated patient outcome and contributed to adherence to standard clinical practices in emergency situations.
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Several guidelines on the evaluation of patients with suspected cervical spine trauma in the Emergency Department (ED) exist. High heterogeneity between different guidelines has been reported. Aim of this study was to find areas of agreement and disagreement between guidelines, to identify topics in which further research is needed and to provide an evidence-based cervical spine trauma algorithm for ED physicians. ⋯ The agreement between different guidelines and the evidence on which recommendations are based is low. An attempt to build an evidence-based algorithm has been made. More studies are needed on many topics.