Pediatric emergency care
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Pediatric emergency care · Sep 2020
Case ReportsPoint-of-Care Ultrasound for Undifferentiated Abdominal Pain in a Pediatric Patient: A Proposed Algorithm.
Abdominal pain is a common presentation in the pediatric emergency department and may pose a diagnostic challenge to the physician. Although most abdominal pain is benign, the presence of abdominal pain may represent a surgical emergency. We present an atypical presentation of perforated appendicitis in a child with 2 weeks of abdominal pain, in whom point-of-care ultrasound expedited diagnosis and patient disposition. We then recommend a diagnostic approach for using point-of-care ultrasound in a pediatric patient with undifferentiated abdominal pain.
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Pediatric emergency care · Sep 2020
Discharge Prescription Errors After the Implementation of a Prospective Pharmacist Review Process in a Pediatric Emergency Department.
Pediatric emergency department (ED) patients are at an increased risk for experiencing a preventable medication error. Studies show that pharmacists are effective at decreasing medication errors on inpatient orders but there are few studies looking at error reduction on discharge prescriptions. Children's Health implemented a prospective pharmacist verification process on all ED discharge prescriptions. The objective of this study is to identify and describe the prescription errors leaving a pediatric ED after the implementation of this pharmacist review process. ⋯ Forty-one errors were identified from 750 randomly selected prescriptions for a total error rate of 5.5%. The most common subtypes of errors were missing duration (39%) and antimicrobial optimization (24.4%). When using the Taylor et al 2005 scale, no prescriptions were classified as severe or serious. None of the errors led to patient harm.
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Pediatric emergency care · Sep 2020
Intranasal Fentanyl and Midazolam for Procedural Analgesia and Anxiolysis in Pediatric Urgent Care Centers.
Intranasal fentanyl and midazolam use is increasing in the acute care setting for analgesia and anxiolysis, but there is a lack of literature demonstrating their use, alone or in combination, at pediatric urgent care centers. ⋯ Intranasal fentanyl and midazolam when administrated alone and in combination can provide analgesia and anxiolysis for minor procedures in pediatric patients treated in the urgent care setting.