Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study
Multicenter validation of the Philadelphia EMS admission rule (PEAR) to predict hospital admission in adult patients using out-of-hospital data.
The objective was to validate a previously derived prediction rule for hospital admission using routinely collected out-of-hospital information. ⋯ The ability of this EMS rule to predict the likelihood of hospital admission appears valid in this multicenter cohort. Further studies are needed to measure the impact and feasibility of using this rule to guide decision-making.
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The authors hypothesized that patients with active chest pain at the time of a normal electrocardiogram (ECG) have a lower frequency of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) than patients being evaluated for chest pain but with no active chest pain at the time of a normal ECG. The study objective was to describe the association between chest pain in patients with a normal ECG and the diagnosis of ACS. ⋯ Contrary to our hypothesis concerning patients who presented to the ED with a chief complaint of chest pain, our study demonstrated no difference in the frequency of acute coronary syndrome between patients with chest pain at the time of acquisition of a normal electrocardiogram and those without chest pain during acquisition of a normal electrocardiogram.
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The authors hypothesized that unethical recruiting practices and illegal questioning occur during emergency medicine (EM) resident recruitment. The objectives were to estimate the prevalence of specific unethical recruiting practices and illegal questioning by EM programs based on the perceptions of residency applicants and to measure the effect of these perceptions on applicant appraisal of programs. ⋯ These results demonstrate that among survey respondents, some perceived unethical recruiting behaviors and illegal questioning in the 2005 and 2006 Match. Perceptions of such behaviors appeared to have a negative impact on applicant appraisal of EM residency programs.