Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Can sick children tell time?: emergency department presentation patterns of critically ill children.
Children show a consistent pattern of ED use, with the majority of patients presenting during the late afternoon and evening hours. This study evaluated whether such a diurnal pattern also exists for critically ill children and the implications of such a presentation pattern on ED staffing. ⋯ Critically ill children present more uniformly throughout the day and do not have the same presentation patterns as ambulatory children. ED staffing should reflect this difference and not focus pediatric ED services simply on hours of peak pediatric visits.
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Review Case Reports
Clinical decision making: an emergency medicine perspective.
Clinical decision making (CDM) describes a form of qualitative inquiry that examines the thought processes involved in making medical decisions. A significant body of literature exists on the orderly "hypothetico-deductive" model of clinical decision making. ⋯ The concept of diagnostic uncertainty and the utility of the diagnosis of unknown etiology in the disposition phase of the emergency patient visit are discussed. Finally, a unique EM perspective on clinical decision-making errors is presented.