Journal of accident & emergency medicine
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To determine the current practice of nurse triage in accident and emergency departments in England, and to examine the relation between triage systems and performance in the Department of Health comparative performance guide. ⋯ The national performance figures do not correlate with the quality of the initial assessment; comparisons based on these figures are therefore misleading. More effective performance indicators are available, which would provide a truer indication of the quality of accident and emergency services.
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A specialist transfer team based in the regional intensive therapy unit (ITU) at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, acts as a central interhospital retrieval team for Glasgow and the west of Scotland. The establishment of trauma systems has been proposed. This paper describes the activities of the specialist transfer team to illustrate the potential role of a central retrieval team within such a system.
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Victims of near hanging are being increasingly seen in accident and emergency (A&E) department. This paper reports on seven cases of near hanging seen over four years in a district general hospital. The mechanism of injury is ligature strangulation rather than cervical spinal cord injury. All cases of near hanging should be actively and vigorously resuscitated, as initial presenting features bear a poor correlation to eventual outcome.