Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
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Emergency department nurses are faced with an overwhelming number of patients each day. The average number of emergency department visits is increasing by 3.5% per year. Numerous studies have been conducted to improve the patient throughput process, which has impact on patient flow. A disruption of the process can cause a backlog of patients and create a hardship for both patients and staff. ⋯ The quality initiative team made several recommendations based on the research of a flow nurse coordinator. The recommendations included a weekly ED staffing committee meeting, consisting of frontline ED staff, nurse educators, ED leadership, and flow nurse coordinator. The support and active involvement of the executive leadership team would assist in sustaining changes to the new process.
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False-positive blood-culture results due to skin contamination of samples remain a persistent problem for health care providers. Our health system recognized that our rates of contamination across the 4 emergency department campuses were above the national average. ⋯ This unique collection system can reduce the risk of blood culture contamination significantly and is designed to augment, rather than replace, the standard phlebotomy protocol already in use in most health care settings.
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Emergency staff members have a unique role in providing episodic care to marginalized populations. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is a marginalized population that is routinely encountered by ED staff. Implicit prejudice may influence emergency staff interactions and contribute to distrust of health care providers by some members of the LGBT community. The purpose of our study is to evaluate aggregate ED health care team member's knowledge and attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people pre- and post-cultural competency training education. ⋯ Status post-cultural competency training, the AIM results indicated that our team's collective knowledge about challenges facing the LGBT community increased, and the aggregate scores reflected more openness, support, and awareness of oppression by our staff. This elevated self-awareness and increased knowledge may aid in creating a more open, supportive patient experience for the LGBT community members seeking care at our facility.