The American journal of emergency medicine
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It is vital to ensure equitable care is given to all patients and to eliminate any disparities in administration of analgesics and opioids in emergency department (ED) patients with long-bone fractures. Our objective was to determine whether sex, ethnic, or racial disparities still exist in administration and prescription of analgesics and opioids in ED patients with long-bone fractures using a current nationally representative database. ⋯ Between 2016 and 2019 there were no significant sex, ethnic, or racial disparities in administration or prescription of analgesics or opioids in ED adult patients with long-bone fractures.
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Primary disasters may result in mass casualty events with serious injuries, including crush injury and crush syndrome. ⋯ Crush injury and crush syndrome are common in natural and human-made disasters. Emergency clinicians must understand the pathophysiology, evaluation, and management of these conditions to optimize patient care.
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Thyroid storm is a rare but serious condition that carries a high rate of morbidity and even mortality. ⋯ An understanding of thyroid storm can assist emergency clinicians in diagnosing and managing this potentially deadly disease.
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Transition-of-care program from emergency department to gastroenterology clinics improves follow-up.
Patients discharged from the emergency department (ED) with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms need to appropriately transition their care to a GI outpatient clinic in a timely manner to have their health needs met and avoid significant morbidity. When this transition isn't optimal, patients are lost to follow-up, potentially placing them at risk for adverse events. We sought to study the effectiveness of implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) based transition-of-care (TOC) program from the ED to outpatient GI clinics. ⋯ Our study shows that patients who are discharged from the ED with outpatient GI follow-up are more likely to both schedule and show up to appointments with implementation of an EMR-based direct referral program compared to no patient navigation, particularly among patients of lower socioeconomic status.