The western journal of emergency medicine
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Emergency department (ED) patients in the leave-without-being-seen (LWBS) group risk problems of inefficiency, medical risk, and financial loss. The goal at our hospital is to limit LWBS to <1%. This study's goal was to assess the influence on LWBS associated with prolonging intervals between patient presentation and placement in an exam room (DoorRoom time). This study's major aim was to identify DoorRoom cutoffs that maximize likelihood of meeting the LWBS goal (i.e. <1%). ⋯ Operationally useful DoorRoom cutoffs can be identified, which allow for rational establishment of performance goals for the ED attempting to minimize LWBS.
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Growing evidence supports emergency physician (EP)-performed point-of-care ultrasound (PoC US). However, there is a utilization gap between academic emergency departments (ED) and other emergency settings. We elucidated barriers to PoC US use in a multistate sample of predominantly non-academic EDs to inform future strategies to increase PoC US utilization, particularly in non-academic centers. ⋯ Only 47% of EDs in our five-state sample of predominantly non-academic EDs had PoC US immediately available. When available, the greatest barriers to use were limited training, expense, and limited need. Recent educational and technical advancements may help overcome these barriers.
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Hand hygiene is an important component of infection control efforts. Our primary and secondary goals were to determine the reported rates of hand washing and stethoscope cleaning in emergency medical services (EMS) workers, respectively. ⋯ Reported hand hygiene is poor amongst pre-hospital providers. There is a need for future intervention to improve reported performance in pre-hospital provider hand washing.
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Clinicians and residency programs are increasing their use of social media (SM) websites for educational and promotional uses, yet little is known about the use of these sites by residents and faculty. The objective of the study is to assess patterns of SM use for personal and professional purposes among emergency medicine (EM) residents and faculty. ⋯ EM residents and faculty have different patterns and interests in the personal and professional uses of social media. Awareness of these utilization patterns could benefit future educational endeavors.