Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Objectives Emergency departments (EDs) serve as a health care "safety net" and may be uniquely suited to screening for and addressing patients' unmet social needs. We aimed to better understand patient perspectives on ED-based screening and interventions related to housing instability, as a step toward improving future efforts. Methods We present findings from a qualitative study using in-depth, one-on-one interviews with ED patients who had become homeless in the past 6 months. ⋯ Most participants expressed overall positive views of ED staff/providers asking patients about their housing situation. Conclusions Study participants generally felt positively about screening and interventions for housing in the ED. Insights from this study can inform future ED-based housing instability screening and interventions.
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Multicenter Study
Prehospital airway management for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: A nationwide multicenter study from the KOCARC registry.
This study investigated whether prehospital advanced airway management (AAM) is associated with improved survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) compared with conventional bag-valve-mask (BVM) ventilation. ⋯ In this nationwide real-world data analysis of OHCA, the 30-day neurologically favorable survival did not differ between prehospital AAM and BVM after adjustment for clinical characteristics.
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Twenty-five percent of patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) for a respiratory or cardiovascular medical emergency develop clinically significant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. It is possible that development of PTSD symptoms in this cohort is associated with subsequent adverse physical health events. Our objective was to test whether clinically significant PTSD symptoms 30 days postdischarge are associated with increased risk for hospital readmission within 24 months after discharge among patients presenting to the ED for a respiratory or cardiovascular emergency. ⋯ Hospital readmission is common among survivors of acute respiratory failure and cardiovascular instability, and PTSD symptoms 30 days postdischarge are an independent predictor of hospital readmission. Survivors of medical emergencies may warrant follow-up evaluation for PTSD symptoms, and future research is warranted to better understand the relationship between psychological trauma and hospital readmission.