Emergency nurse : the journal of the RCN Accident and Emergency Nursing Association
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At Leicester Royal Infirmary, the care of frail older people occupies a disproportionate amount of emergency department (ED) staff's time and resources. Too few ED staff are trained to deal with the complex comorbidities associated with older patients, 90 per cent of whom are therefore admitted to hospital. To take the pressure off the ED and reduce the number of avoidable admissions, the hospital has set up an emergency frailty unit to treat patients over the age of 70 who need not be admitted to hospital and to ensure they can receive community care as soon as possible. This article describes how the unit operates.
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Nurses are bound by the Nursing and Midwifery Council code of conduct (2008) to deliver care based on the best available evidence, which involves a combination of clinical expertise and incorporating research into practice (Thompson et al 2004). This article critically evaluates the evidence base of methods available to reduce radial head subluxation in children. The author is a senior staff nurse at an inner-city paediatric emergency department in which about 30,000 children are treated each year.
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This article offers a guide to history taking and initial assessment of children with respiratory ailments, outlines the risk factors involved and describes referral procedures to children's services. It also presents two case studies of children who had been assessed in the author's emergency department and who required inpatient admission for different types of respiratory illness.
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One of the most important aspects of care for children in emergency departments (EDs) is the initial assessment of their conditions and circumstances. Paediatric nurses, or other nurses who have had adequate training and skills in the care of children and younger people, should use the appropriate tools to undertake these assessments so that they can identify and manage children's physical, mental or social problems. This article discusses the use of such tools in the initial assessments of children at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust ED, and how this use has improved practice while raising the profile of paediatric emergency care.