Articles: hospital-emergency-service.
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A decentralized emergency medicine clinical pharmacy program was initiated and has operated now for over 1 year. The program attempted to answer two questions: is there a viable clinical pharmacy role in emergency medicine, and could staff pharmacists successfully function in such a role without formal clinical training and experience? Initial primary objectives were to provide an on-the-spot pharmaceutical consultation service and to initiate new or expanded traditional pharmacy support to staff and patients. A secondary objective was to provide expanded outpatient prescription service to emergency room patients.
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The Medical Information Center at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto began in March 1977 to improve triage, provide an improved poison information center, improve response to telephone callers seeking medical advice, and establish a telephone consultation service for physicians. It employs specially trained nursing staff and integrates functionally related services. To determine program effectiveness we studied the records of patients triaged, telephone calls to the poison information center, and calls for other medical information, for periods both before and after the center's opening. ⋯ The Medical Information Center telephone service ensures that more children are managed at home rather than (unnecessarily) treated in the emergency department. Most parents express satisfaction with this service. Few physicians have used the telephone consultation service.