Articles: emergency-department.
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We sought to describe epidemiological patterns of acute injuries treated in emergency department (ED) and outpatient primary care settings in the United States. ⋯ Medically attended injuries area common in older adults, and their incidence increases with advancing age. Half of all initial visits for acute injuries in older adults are to primary care clinics. Most injured individuals are discharged home, and injury prevention counseling is rarely documented. To inform injury prevention efforts appropriately and to avoid underestimating the burden of injury, future injury studies should include a range of outpatient and inpatient care settings.
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Suicide by organophosphate insecticide (OPI) poisoning is a major clinical concern (predominantly in developing countries), and 200000 deaths occur annually worldwide. Red cell distribution width (RDW) has been used to predict outcome in several clinical conditions. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the RDW and 30-day mortality during OPI poisoning. ⋯ This study showed that RDW is an independent predictor of 30-day mortality in patients with OPI poisoning.
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Although electronic health record systems (EHRs) and emergency department information systems (EDISs) enable safe, efficient, and high-quality care, these systems have not yet been studied well. Here, we assessed (1) the prevalence of EHRs and EDISs, (2) changes in efficiency in emergency medical practices after introducing EHR and EDIS, and (3) barriers to and expectations from the EHR-EDIS transition in EDs of medical facilities with EHRs in Japan. ⋯ To attract EDs to EDIS from EHR, systems focusing on decreasing the time required to produce medical records and establishing appropriate clinical guidelines for residents are required.
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In the United States and around the world, effective, efficient, and reliable strategies to provide emergency care to aging adults is challenging crowded emergency departments (EDs) and a strained health care system. In response, geriatric emergency medicine (EM) clinicians, educators, and researchers collaborated with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), American Geriatrics Society (AGS), Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) to develop guidelines intended to improve ED geriatric care by enhancing expertise, educational, and quality improvement expectations; equipment; policies; and protocols. These "Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines" represent the first formal society-led attempt to characterize the essential attribute of the geriatric ED and received formal approval from the boards of directors for each of the four societies in 2013 and 2014. This article is intended to introduce EM and geriatric health care providers to the guidelines, while providing proposals for educational dissemination, refinement via formal effectiveness evaluations and cost-effectiveness studies, and institutional credentialing.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Emergency Physicians, and Emergency Nurses Association have collaborated to identify practices and principles to guide the care of children, families, and staff in the challenging and uncommon event of the death of a child in the emergency department in this policy statement and in an accompanying technical report.