Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Patient satisfaction with chest pain unit care: findings from the Effectiveness and Safety of Chest Pain Assessment to Prevent Emergency Admissions (ESCAPE) cluster randomised trial.
Chest pain attendances at the emergency department (ED) in the UK are continuing to rise. Chest pain units (CPU) provide nurse-led, protocol-driven care for patients attending the ED with acute chest pain. The ESCAPE trial evaluated the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of CPU care in the NHS. This paper reports the quantitative evaluation of acceptability: patient satisfaction with CPU and routine care. ⋯ No evidence was found that improvements in patient satisfaction associated with CPU care in previous single-centre trials were reproduced in this multicentre study.
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Experience with a novel method of notifying investigators about research subjects in a university-based emergency department (ED) is reported. ⋯ Automated paging using the electronic medical record has the potential to improve enrolment in clinical research studies by improving the speed and sensitivity of identifying eligible subjects.
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Dehydration is a common concern in paediatric emergency care. Limited tools are available to assess reduced urine production, which is commonly cited as a reliable marker of dehydration. ⋯ The hand-held bladder scanner is a convenient, non-invasive and objective adjunct in the assessment and management of children attending the emergency department with suspected dehydration.