Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
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Observational Study
Parental Knowledge and Recall of Concussion Discharge Instructions.
Children increasingly are being seen in the emergency department for a concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). A key aim of the ED visit is to provide discharge advice that can help parents to identify an evolving neurosurgical crisis, facilitate recovery, and prevent reinjury. The present study examined parents' knowledge of symptoms and recall of discharge instructions after their adolescent's mTBI and the effect of supplementing written discharge instructions with verbal instruction and reinforcement. ⋯ Emergency nurses and clinicians should strive to utilize both verbal and written discharge instructions with families to help increase understanding.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of Temporal Artery Versus Rectal Temperature in Emergency Department Patients Who Are Unable to Participate in Oral Temperature Assessment.
In the emergency department, pediatric and geriatric patients who present with illnesses and are unable to participate in oral evaluation of temperature must undergo a rectal temperature (RT) assessment. This study asks if a temporal artery temperature (TAT) measure can supplant the RT measure. ⋯ No influence was detected on the differences between RT and TAT due to age, sex, or emergency severity index (ESI) score in patients or due to profession, years of education, or years of experience in caregivers for either the pediatric or geriatric groups. Furthermore, the adjusted TAT reading could detect fever in individual patients adequately in both the pediatric and geriatric groups. However, the adjusted TAT readings were too frequently divergent from RT readings to be used to measure temperature in individual patients for both pediatric and geriatric groups.