Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Evaluation of a bedside whole-blood rapid troponin T assay in the emergency department. Rapid Evaluation by Assay of Cardiac Troponin T (REACTT) Investigators Study Group.
To evaluate the performance of a new bedside whole-blood rapid assay for cardiac troponin T (cTnT) in patients presenting to the ED with symptoms consistent with acute coronary ischemia. ⋯ The sensitivity of this whole-blood rapid cTnT assay for detecting AMI is comparable to that of current serum assays and offers the advantage of providing rapid bedside results. Discrepancies between serum and whole-blood assays for cTnT noted in this study may indicate the need for further education for the test reader prior to patient use.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
The effect of injection speed on the pain of lidocaine infiltration.
To determine whether reducing the speed of injection is effective in reducing injection pain for buffered and unbuffered lidocaine solutions. ⋯ Reducing injection speed did not produce a statistically significant change in injection pain for either buffered or unbuffered solutions.
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To evaluate probabilistic matching for linking a cohort of cardiac arrest (CA) patients identified in the Metro Toronto Ambulance (MTA) database in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to their appropriate record in either the Vital Statistics Information System (VSIS) or the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) databases and thus establish their clinical outcomes. ⋯ Probabilistic matching is an effective method by which researchers can use existing administrative data to determine outcomes of population cohorts. This is especially valuable in situations where controlled intervention studies are not feasible or may be inappropriate. In this analysis, in-hospital management of admitted CA patients, as determined by hospital-specific survival rates and length of stay, suggests no measurable differences in the care provided to these patients by hospitals in Toronto.
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Faculty development is an important, multifaceted topic in academic medicine. In this article, academic emergency physicians discuss aspects of faculty development, including: 1) a department chair's method for developing individual faculty members, 2) the traditional university approach to promotion and tenure, 3) faculty development in a new department, and 4) personal development.