Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Despite the health benefits of organized sports, high school athletes are at risk for lower extremity sports-related injuries (LESRIs). The authors documented the epidemiology of LESRIs among U.S. high school athletes. ⋯ While LESRIs occur commonly in high school athletes, team- and gender-specific patterns exist. Emergency department staff will likely encounter such injuries. To optimize prevention strategies, ongoing surveillance is needed.
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Missing data are commonly encountered in clinical research. Unfortunately, they are often neglected or not properly handled during analytic procedures, and this may substantially bias the results of the study, reduce study power, and lead to invalid conclusions. ⋯ In part 1, the authors will describe relatively simple approaches to handling missing data, including complete-case analysis, available-case analysis, and several forms of single imputation, including mean imputation, regression imputation, hot and cold deck imputation, last observation carried forward, and worst case analysis. In part 2, the authors will describe in detail multiple imputation, a more sophisticated and valid method for handling missing data.
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To determine if respondents differed by their demography (age group, race or ethnicity, and insurance status) in their tendency to correctly answer knowledge-based questions when they were in an agree-disagree instead of a multiple-choice format. ⋯ This study demonstrated that survey responses are influenced by the format of the questions, particularly in certain demographic groups. Policy makers and researchers might draw false conclusions about the baseline knowledge and need for education of patients, especially in these populations. The use of agree-disagree format questions in preventive health knowledge surveys should be avoided whenever possible.
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Emergency physicians (EPs) may disagree on when or whether patients need restraints. There is no good objective measure of the likelihood of EPs to restrain patients. ⋯ The VAPERS scale covers a wide range of important variables in emergency situations. It successfully measured likelihood to restrain in this pilot study for overall situations, and for subgroups, based on patient characteristics. A shortened five-video VAPERS also successfully measured the overall likelihood to restrain.
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To determine the baseline level and evolution of defensive medicine and malpractice concern (MC) of emergency medicine (EM) residents. ⋯ Physicians enter four-year EM residencies in California with moderate MC and defensive medicine, which do not change significantly over time and do not markedly impact their decisions to perform emergency department procedures. Malpractice fear markedly decreases interns' enjoyment of medicine, but this effect decreases by residency completion.