Articles: emergency-department.
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The emergency department clinical environment is unique, and guidelines for promoting supportive and equitable workplace cultures ensure success and longevity for pregnant persons and parents in emergency medicine. There is paucity, variability, and dissatisfaction with current parental (historically referred to as maternity and paternity) leave policies. This paper describes the development of consensus-derived recommendations to serve as a framework for emergency departments across the country for incorporating family-friendly policies. Policies that foster a family-inclusive workplace by allowing for professional advancement without sacrificing personal values regardless of sex, gender, and gender identity are critical for emergency medicine recruitment and retention.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2024
Examining food insecurity in a regional New Zealand emergency department: A cross-sectional study.
To determine the prevalence of food insecurity (FI) among patients in a regional New Zealand ED, factors associated with FI and feasibility of an ED-based FI screening programme with voluntary social work (SW) follow up. ⋯ FI was prevalent among patients in a regional NZ ED. An ED-based FI screening programme with voluntary SW follow up was feasible and acceptable to ED patients.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2024
Power and politics of leading change in emergency departments: A qualitative study of Australasian emergency physicians.
The ability to lead change is well recognised as a core leadership competency for clinicians, including emergency physicians. However, little is known about how emergency physicians' think about change leadership. The present study explores Australasian emergency physicians' beliefs about the factors that help and hinder efforts to lead change in Australasian EDs. ⋯ The findings of our study provide new insight into emergency physicians' conceptions of the nature, barriers to and enablers of change and point to new directions in leadership development to support emergency physicians' aspirations in the context of quality, organisation and health systems improvement.
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To determine whether insurance status can function as a sufficient proxy for socioeconomic status in emergency medicine research by examining the concordance between insurance status and direct socioeconomic status measures in a sample of pediatric patients. ⋯ Insurance status misclassified socioeconomic status in up to 23% of pediatric patients, as measured by caregivers' education and income. Emergency medicine studies of pediatric patients using insurance as a covariate to adjust for socioeconomic status may need to consider this misclassification and the resulting potential for bias. These findings require confirmation in larger, more diverse samples, including adult patients.
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Following discharge from a pediatric emergency department (ED) or urgent care, many families do not pick up their prescribed medications. The aim of this quality improvement study was to increase the percentage of patients discharged home with medications in-hand from 6% to 30% within 6 months. ⋯ In this study, the availability of a 24-hour on-site pharmacy appears to be the most impactful intervention increasing access to discharge medications for families. Other interventions, such as a pilot study in the urgent care and implementing default electronic prescribing, may have potentiated the effect of the new pharmacy.