Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study
Faculty evaluation by residents in an emergency medicine program: a new evaluation instrument.
Evaluation of preceptors in training programs is essential; however, little research has been performed in the setting of the emergency department (ED). The goal of this pilot study was to determine the validity and reliability of a faculty evaluation instrument-the Emergency Rotation (ER) scale-developed specifically for use in emergency medicine (EM). ⋯ The ER scale appears to be valid and reliable. It performs well when compared with previously psychometrically tested tools. It is a sensible, well-adapted tool for the teaching environment offered by EM.
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To the authors' knowledge, no outcome-based, randomized clinical trial of the safety of opioid analgesics in acute abdominal pain exists. ⋯ A clinical trial would need to randomize more than 1,500 patients to establish the equivalent adverse outcome rates of opioids and placebo: the sample size of all existing studies combined is insufficient to make such a conclusion. Although opioids were associated with a higher adverse outcome rate in this logistic regression, the authors believe this may be due to confounding by pain severity. They emphasize that the study's design precludes conclusion of a causal link. No change in clinical practice is warranted. A randomized clinical trial of sufficient size to definitively resolve this issue is needed.
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To determine the clinical presentation of emergency department (ED) patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). ⋯ Patients with active pulmonary TB may have multiple ED visits, and often have nonpulmonary complaints. Tuberculosis risk factors and symptoms are usually present in these patients but often missed at ED triage. The diversity of clinical presentations among ED patients with pulmonary TB will likely make it difficult to develop and implement high-yield triage screening criteria.
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Multicenter Study
Does interview date affect match list position in the emergency medicine national residency matching program match?
Some residency applicants believe that the date on which they interview with a residency program influences how the program ranks them in the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP). Therefore, the authors studied whether interview date affects match list position in the emergency medicine (EM) residency match. ⋯ In this study, interview date for EM residency positions in the 1997-98 season did not affect match list position among ranked applicants. Moreover, interview date had nno effect on the decision to leave candidates unranked.