Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
-
Research focused on improving the outcome of patients with pain is an important aspect of emergency care, yet little information has been published to quantify pain severity, patient improvement, and return to independent function after ED discharge. Because of the paucity of available clinical data, this pilot study was designed to determine the acceptability and feasibility of using electronic data collection procedures. Specifically, we examined the willingness of discharged ED patients to use portable touch-screen computers as an alternative to traditional "paper and pencil" or telephone data collection methods to report postdischarge pain. ⋯ Touch-screen computers are a feasible and acceptable approach to collecting information about how patients self-manage unresolved pain after discharge from an emergency department. This methodology offers an alternative to traditional data collection methods. These data can inform researchers as they design future studies and assist emergency nurses who are responsible for planning quality improvement initiatives.
-
Observational Study
Evaluating Implementation of the Emergency Severity Index in a Belgian Hospital.
Triage aims to categorize patients based on their clinical need and the available departmental resources. To accomplish this goal, one needs to ensure that the implemented triage system is reliable and that staff use it correctly. Therefore this study assessed the ability of Belgium nurses to apply the Emergency Severity Index (ESI), version 4, to hypothetical case scenarios after an educational intervention. ⋯ Implementation of the ESI into a novel setting guided by a locally developed training program resulted in suboptimal interrater agreement. Existing weighted κ schemes overestimated the interrater agreement between the triage nurse-assigned ESI level and the reference standard. By providing an aggregated measure of agreement, which allows partial agreement, clinically significant misclassification was masked by a misleading "good" interrater agreement.
-
The review questions that are featured in each of the issues of JEN are based upon the Emergency Nursing Core Curriculum and other pertinent resources to emergency nursing practice, pediatric and adult. These questions offer emergency nurses an opportunity to test their knowledge about their practice. These questions appear both in print and online.