Southern medical journal
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Southern medical journal · Jan 2018
Association Between Perceived Discrimination and Emergency Department Use Among Safety-Net Patients in the Southwestern United States.
Patients' perceptions of how they are treated in their interactions with the healthcare system represent important and valid measures of healthcare quality that may influence health utilization, outcomes, and costs. Perceived discrimination or the sense of being treated unfairly is an important patient perception known to adversely affect health, but the relation of such perceptions to health-seeking behaviors related to low-acuity emergency department (ED) use is unclear. The objectives of this exploratory study were to describe the prevalence and nature of perceived discrimination or perceived unfair treatment (PD/PUT), and to examine the association of PD/PUT with healthcare utilization among adult safety-net patients in the southwestern United States who sought ED treatment for low-acuity conditions. ⋯ A substantial proportion of this sample of adult safety-net patients in the Southwest reported experiencing PD/PUT in their healthcare interactions and most frequently attributed such perceptions to their insurance status. Although this study does not establish a causal link between PD/PUT and utilization of care in specific settings, it highlights the need to better understand the underlying causes of PD/PUT across multiple delivery settings and to clarify the extent to which such experiences may influence patients' healthcare-seeking behaviors. Federal and state policies that aim to maintain or expand health insurance coverage for safety-net populations should consider the role of health insurance status in driving perceptions of being discriminated against or treated unfairly.
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Southern medical journal · Dec 2017
Cross-Sectional Study of the Relation of Health Literacy to Primary Language and Emergency Department Length of Stay.
The primary aim of this study was to determine whether emergency department (ED) length of stay (LOS) or primary language was related to the degree of health literacy of patients. ⋯ There was a significant difference in health literacy based on language, with 93% of all Spanish-speaking patients in our sample having limited health literacy. We found no significant difference in ED LOS between patients with limited health and adequate health literacy in an academic urban ED setting.
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Southern medical journal · Dec 2017
Developing a Mass Casualty Surge Capacity Protocol for Emergency Medical Services to Use for Patient Distribution.
Metropolitan areas must be prepared to manage large numbers of casualties related to a major incident. Most US cities do not have adequate trauma center capacity to manage large-scale mass casualty incidents (MCIs). Creating surge capacity requires the distribution of casualties to hospitals that are not designated as trauma centers. Our objectives were to extrapolate MCI response research into operational objectives for MCI distribution plan development; formulate a patient distribution model based on research, hospital capacities, and resource availability; and design and disseminate a casualty distribution tool for use by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel to distribute patients to the appropriate level of care. ⋯ Directing critically ill patients to designated trauma centers has the potential to reduce mortality associated with the event. When applied to MCI responses, damage-control principles reduce resource utilization and optimize surge capacity. A universal system for mass casualty triage was identified and incorporated into the region's EMS. Flagship regional coordinating hospitals were designated to coordinate the logistics of the disaster response of both trauma-designated and undesignated hospitals. Finally, a distribution tool was created to direct the flow of critically injured patients to trauma centers and redirect patients with lesser injuries to centers without trauma designation. The tool was distributed to local EMS personnel and validated in a series of tabletop and functional drills. These efforts demonstrate that a regional response to MCIs can be implemented in metropolitan areas under-resourced for trauma care.
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Southern medical journal · Dec 2017
Objective Structured Clinical Examination-Based Teaching of the Musculoskeletal Examination.
Musculoskeletal complaints are the most common presenting illnesses in primary care settings, yet physicians often are underprepared to manage such complaints. We sought to create and evaluate an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE)-based musculoskeletal workshop designed to simultaneously educate medical students and internal medicine residents, enlisting volunteer medical students as standardized patients (SPs). ⋯ Our novel OSCE-based musculoskeletal workshop, which enlists medical students to serve as SPs, engendered sustainable improvements in knowledge and clinical skills among both residents and participating students, thereby offering an innovative approach to simultaneously meeting both undergraduate and graduate medical education needs.