Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Many emergency departments (EDs) have incorporated pain assessment scales in the medical record to improve compliance with the requirements of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The authors conducted a pre-post trial investigating the effects of introducing a templated chart on the documentation of pain assessments and the provision of analgesia to ED patients. ⋯ Although documentation is improved with a templated chart, this improvement did not translate into improved patient care.
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To assess a point-of-care (POC) urine trypsinogen (UT) test for the diagnosis of pancreatitis in the emergency department (ED). ⋯ A POC UT screening test for pancreatitis in the ED compared favorably with plasma lipase and amylase levels. Future studies should be performed to explore whether this test in the ED setting has better clinical utility than plasma lipase or amylase.
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Multicenter Study
Procedural sedation in the community emergency department: initial results of the ProSCED registry.
Procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) has been well profiled in experimental studies in university emergency departments. Extrapolation of these practices into the community hospital setting is not well established. This report describes community hospital practices and outcomes in a multicenter PSA registry. ⋯ Community emergency physicians deliver safe and effective PSA over a wide variety of ages and procedures while using a broad selection of agents.
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Emergency department (ED) triage prioritizes patients on the basis of the urgency of need for care. eTRIAGE is a Web-based triage decision support tool that is based on the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS), a five level triage system (CTAS 1 = resuscitation, CTAS 5 = nonurgent). ⋯ Acuity measured by eTRIAGE demonstrates excellent predictive validity for resource utilization and ED and hospital costs. Future research should focus on specific presenting complaints and targeted resources to more accurately assess eTRIAGE validity.