Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Traumatic injury and its sequelae remain a major, unrecognized public health problem in North America. Traumatic injury is the principal cause of death in patients aged 1-44 years and the overall leading cause of life-years lost in the United States. Recognizing this, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in conjunction with other federal agencies, organized a conference in June 2000 to discuss the basic and clinical research needs that could lead to improved outcomes following cardiopulmonary or post injury resuscitation. ⋯ A coordinated trauma research program should aim to replicate the success achieved by such programs; however, a centralized federal "home" for trauma research does not exist. Consequently, the existing limited research support is derived from NIH institutes in addition to other federal and state agencies. This report serves to describe some of the obstacles and outline various strategies and priorities for basic science, clinical, and translational trauma resuscitation research.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Emergency department resuscitative procedures: animal laboratory training improves procedural competency and speed.
Certain resuscitative procedures can be lifesaving, but are performed infrequently by emergency medicine (EM) residents on human subjects. Alternative training methods for gaining procedural proficiency must be explored and tested. ⋯ Residents with animal laboratory training six months prior to testing demonstrated improved procedural competency and speed in the performance of resuscitative procedures.
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Visual analog pain scales are reliable measures in older children and adults; however, pain studies that include young children often rely on parental or practitioner assessments for measuring pain severity. The authors correlated patient, parental, and practitioner pain assessments for young children with acute pain. ⋯ There is poor agreement between pain ratings by children, parents, and practitioners. It is unclear which assessment best approximates the true degree of pain the child is experiencing.
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To systematically review the medical literature in order to determine the strength of the recommendation for screening and brief intervention (SBI) for alcohol-related problems in the emergency department (ED) setting. ⋯ The authors recommend that SBI for alcohol-related problems in the ED be incorporated into clinical practice.