Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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British medical bulletin · Mar 2024
Variations in older people's emergency care use by social care setting: a systematic review of international evidence.
Older adults' use of social care and their healthcare utilization are closely related. Residents of care homes access emergency care more often than the wider older population; however, less is known about emergency care use across other social care settings. ⋯ There is a paucity of published research on emergency hospital use from social care settings, particularly home care and assisted living facilities. More attention is needed on this area, with standardized definitions to enable comparisons between studies.
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Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are gaining favor in clinical and research settings given their ability to capture a patient's symptom burden, functional status, and quality of life. Our objective in this systematic review was to summarize studies including PROMs assessed among older adults (age ≥ 65 years) after seeking emergency care. ⋯ PROM assessments among older adults following an ED visit frequently measured physical function, with very few assessments occurring within the first 1 month after an ED visit.
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Emergency Department (ED) crowding is defined as a situation wherein the demands of emergency services overcome the ability of a department to provide high-quality care within an appropriate time frame. There is a need for solutions, as the harms of crowding impact patients, staff, and healthcare spending. An overview of ED crowding was previously published by our group, which outlines these global issues. ⋯ The results of the summary displayed a requirement for increasing studies in input and output interventions, as these showed the best outcomes with regard to ED crowding metrics. Moreover, the results displayed heterogeneous results at each level of ED care; these reflected that generally solutions have not been matched to specific problems facing regional centres. Thus, individual factors need to be considered when implementing solutions in Emergency Departments.
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Scand J Prim Health Care · Mar 2024
ReviewIdentifying performance indicators to measure overall performance of telephone triage - a scoping review.
This article aims to summarize performance indicators used in telephone triage services research, and make recommendations for the selection of valid indicators to measure the performance of telephone triage. We describe what kind of frameworks, performance indicators, or variables have been used for evaluating telephone triage performance by systematically mapping the telephone triage performance measurement. The objective was to find measures for each Triple Aim dimension. ⋯ Measuring the performance of telephone triage requires an extensive and comprehensive approach. We presented performance indicators that may be included in the framework for measuring the performance of telephone triage to support overall performance measurements of telephone triage.
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Improvements have been made in optimizing initial care of trauma patients, both in prehospital systems as well as in the emergency department, and these have also favorably affected longer term outcomes. However, as specific treatments for bleeding are largely lacking, many patients continue to die from hemorrhage. ⋯ Thereby, trauma remains a challenge for intensivists. This review describes the most pressing research questions in trauma, as well as new approaches to trauma research, with the aim to bring improved therapies to the bedside within the twenty-first century.