Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Review Meta Analysis
Systemic antibiotics after incision and drainage of simple abscesses: a meta-analysis.
Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of cutaneous abscesses. While there is general agreement that abscesses should be treated with incision and drainage, it is unclear whether systemic antibiotics should be routinely prescribed. ⋯ When given in addition to incision and drainage, systemic antibiotics do not significantly improve the percentage of patients with complete resolution of their abscesses.
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Little is known about the expectations of patients attending the emergency department (ED) with minor injuries. Failure to address expectations may lead to dissatisfaction and poor compliance. We aimed to describe patient expectations of minor injury care and explore the association between unmet expectations and patient satisfaction. ⋯ Patients often expect interventions for minor injuries that they do not receive, but in most cases an explanation was given. We were unable to demonstrate an association between unmet expectations and reduced satisfaction with care.
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Social media and mobile applications that allow people to work anywhere are changing the way people can contribute and collaborate. ⋯ It is feasible to engage a mobile workforce to complete health research-related tasks. Participants were able to validate information about emergency public health resources.
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To evaluate the construct of triage acuity as measured by the South African Triage Scale (SATS) against a set of reference vignettes. ⋯ The results of this study provide an alternative to evaluating triage scales against the construct of acuity as measured with the SATS. This method of using 80% consensus vignettes may, however, systematically bias the validity estimate towards better performance.