Annals of emergency medicine
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Editor's capsule summary for Cruz et al: (1) WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ON THIS TOPIC: Valid clinical research requires high-quality data collection. Physicians are commonly considered the standard by which valid prospective data are obtained. WHAT QUESTION THIS STUDY ADDRESSED: This study determined whether non-medically trained research assistants could reliably collect subjective historical data from emergency department patients with chest pain. ⋯ Research assistants demonstrated fair to excellent reliability (as defined by crude agreement and kappa) when obtaining cardiac histories and cardiac risk factors. HOW THIS MIGHT CHANGE CLINICAL PRACTICE: The results of this study will not change clinical practice. They do, however, provide evidence to support the use of trained research assistants for the collection of certain types of clinical data.
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Palliative care is the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual care provided to patients from diagnosis to death or resolution of a life-threatening illness. Hospice care is a comprehensive program of care that is appropriate when patients with chronic, progressive, and eventually fatal illness are determined to have a prognosis of 6 months or fewer. Hospice and palliative medicine has now been recognized by the American Board of Medical Subspecialties as a field with a unique body of knowledge and practice. ⋯ These would include assessing and communicating prognoses, managing the relief of pain and other distressing symptoms, helping articulate goals of patient care, understanding ethical and legal requirements; and ensuring the provision of culturally appropriate spiritual care in the last hours of living. Front-line emergency physicians possessing these basic palliative medicine skills will be able to work collaboratively with subspecialty physicians who are dually certified in emergency medicine and hospice and palliative medicine. Together, generalist and specialist emergency physicians can advance research, education, and policy in this new field to reach the common goals of high-quality, efficient, evidence-based palliative care in the emergency department.
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Questions about burnout, career satisfaction, and longevity of emergency physicians have been raised but no studies have examined tolerance for uncertainty as a risk factor for burnout. Primary objectives of this study are to assess the role of uncertainty tolerance in predicting career burnout and to estimate the proportion of emergency physicians who exhibit high levels of career burnout. ⋯ A large percentage of emergency physicians in this study, 32.1%, exhibited emotional exhaustion, which is the core symptom of burnout. Emotional exhaustion was not related to age or type of practice and was not mitigated by training in emergency medicine. Physicians studied did not feel anxiety because of general uncertainty, difficulty in disclosing uncertainty to patients, or admitting errors to other physicians. High anxiety caused by concern for bad outcomes was the strongest predictor of burnout. Despite exhibiting emotional exhaustion, the majority of respondents are satisfied with the career of emergency medicine.