BMC emergency medicine
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BMC emergency medicine · Jan 2011
Modeling factors influencing the demand for emergency department services in Ontario: a comparison of methods.
Emergency departments are medical treatment facilities, designed to provide episodic care to patients suffering from acute injuries and illnesses as well as patients who are experiencing sporadic flare-ups of underlying chronic medical conditions which require immediate attention. Supply and demand for emergency department services varies across geographic regions and time. Some persons do not rely on the service at all whereas; others use the service on repeated occasions. Issues regarding increased wait times for services and crowding illustrate the need to investigate which factors are associated with increased frequency of emergency department utilization. The evidence from this study can help inform policy makers on the appropriate mix of supply and demand targeted health care policies necessary to ensure that patients receive appropriate health care delivery in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The purpose of this report is to assess those factors resulting in increased demand for emergency department services in Ontario. We assess how utilization rates vary according to the severity of patient presentation in the emergency department. We are specifically interested in the impact that access to primary care physicians has on the demand for emergency department services. Additionally, we wish to investigate these trends using a series of novel regression models for count outcomes which have yet to be employed in the domain of emergency medical research. ⋯ Using a theoretically appropriate hurdle negative binomial regression model this unique study illustrates that access to a primary care physician is an important predictor of both the odds and rate of emergency department utilization in Ontario. Restructuring primary care services, with aims of increasing access to undersupplied populations may result in decreased emergency department utilization rates by approximately 43% for low severity triage level cases.
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Emergency departments across the globe follow a triage system in order to cope with overcrowding. The intention behind triage is to improve the emergency care and to prioritize cases in terms of clinical urgency. ⋯ We integrate the results from the analysis using four principles of biomedical ethics into care ethics perspective on triage and propose an integrated clinically and ethically based framework of emergency department triage planning, as seen from a comprehensive ethics perspective that incorporates both the principles-based and care-oriented approach.
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BMC emergency medicine · Jan 2011
Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining therapy in a Moroccan Emergency Department: an observational study.
Withdrawing and withholding life-support therapy (WH/WD) are undeniably integrated parts of medical activity. However, Emergency Department (ED) might not be the most appropriate place to give end-of life (EOL) care; the legal aspects and practices of the EOL care in emergency rooms are rarely mentioned in the medical literature and should be studied. The aims of this study were to assess frequency of situations where life-support therapies were withheld or withdrawn and modalities for implement of these decisions. ⋯ Life-sustaining treatment were frequently withheld or withdrawn from elderly patients with underlying chronic cardiovascular disease or metastatic cancer or patients with acute neurological medical disorders in a Moroccan ED. Religious beliefs and the lack of guidelines and official Moroccan laws could explain the ethical limitations of the decision-making process recorded in this study.
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BMC emergency medicine · Jan 2011
Multicenter StudyBe careful with triage in emergency departments: interobserver agreement on 1,578 patients in France.
For several decades, emergency departments (EDs) utilization has increased, inducing ED overcrowding in many countries. This phenomenon is related partly to an excessive number of nonurgent patients. To resolve ED overcrowding and to decrease nonurgent visits, the most common solution has been to triage the ED patients to identify potentially nonurgent patients, i.e. which could have been dealt with by general practitioner. The objective of this study was to measure agreement among ED health professionals on the urgency of an ED visit, and to determine if the level of agreement is consistent among different sub-groups based on following explicit criteria: age, medical status, type of referral to the ED, investigations performed in the ED, and the discharge from the ED. ⋯ The lack of physician-nurse agreement and the inability to predict hospitalization have important implications for patient safety. When urgency screening is used to determine treatment priority, disagreement might not matter because all patients in the ED are seen and treated. But using assessments as the basis for refusal of care to potential nonurgent patients raises legal, ethical, and safety issues. Managed care organizations should be cautious when applying such criteria to restrict access to EDs.
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BMC emergency medicine · Jan 2011
Randomized Controlled TrialImpact of physical fitness and biometric data on the quality of external chest compression: a randomised, crossover trial.
During circulatory arrest, effective external chest compression (ECC) is a key element for patient survival. In 2005, international emergency medical organisations changed their recommended compression-ventilation ratio (CVR) from 15:2 to 30:2 to acknowledge the vital importance of ECC. We hypothesised that physical fitness, biometric data and gender can influence the quality of ECC. Furthermore, we aimed to determine objective parameters of physical fitness that can reliably predict the quality of ECC. ⋯ The quality of the ECC and fatigue can both be predicted by BMI and physical fitness. An evaluation focussing on the upper body may be a more valid predictor of ECC quality than cycling based tests. Our data strongly support the recommendation to relieve ECC providers after two minutes.