The American journal of emergency medicine
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Admission on weekends and off-hours has been associated with poor outcomes and mortality from acute stroke. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether an organized clinical pathway (CP) for ischemic stroke can effectively reduce the time from arrival to evaluation and treatment in the emergency department (ED) and improve outcomes, regardless of the time from arrival in the ED. ⋯ An organized CP, based on CPOE, for ischemic stroke can effectively attenuate disparities in the time interval between ED arrival to evaluation and treatment regardless of ED arrival time. This pathway may also help to eliminate off-hour and weekend effects on outcomes from ischemic stroke.
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Recent guidelines have emphasized the need for uninterrupted chest compressions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the rescuer's tolerability of uninterrupted chest compressions. ⋯ Performing uninterrupted chest compressions for 7 minutes is an arduous procedure. Higher noradrenalin levels before the procedure might be associated with incorrect chest compressions.
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Crowding and limited resources have increased the strain on acute care facilities and emergency departments worldwide. These problems are particularly prevalent in developing countries. Discrete event simulation is a computer-based tool that can be used to estimate how changes to complex health care delivery systems such as emergency departments will affect operational performance. Using this modality, our objective was to identify operational interventions that could potentially improve patient throughput of one acute care setting in a developing country. ⋯ Resource-neutral interventions identified through discrete event simulation modeling have the potential to improve acute care throughput in this Ghanaian municipal hospital. Discrete event simulation offers another approach to identifying potentially effective interventions to improve patient flow in emergency and acute care in resource-limited settings.
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The purpose of this study is to provide resistance data for Escherichia coli isolates causing urinary tract infections in emergency department (ED) patients not requiring admission and explore if differences between this subpopulation and the hospital antibiogram exist. Differences between community-acquired urinary tract infection (CA-UTI) and health care-associated (HA-UTI) subgroups were also investigated. ⋯ E coli susceptibility for ED patients not requiring admission may not be accurately represented by hospital antibiograms that contain culture data from various patient types, sites of infection, or patients with varying illness severity. Separation of the ED population into CA-UTI and HA-UTI subgroups may be helpful when selecting empiric antibiotic therapy.
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Variation in hospital admission rates of patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) may represent an opportunity to improve practice. We seek to describe national variation in hospital admission rates from the ED and to determine the degree to which variation is not explained by patient characteristics or hospital factors. ⋯ There was variation in hospital admission rates from the ED in the United States, even after adjusting for patients' sociodemographic and clinical characteristics and accounting for hospital factors. Our findings suggest that suggesting that the likelihood of being admitted from the ED is not only dependent on clinical factors but also at which hospital the patient seeks care.