Articles: emergency-medicine.
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The objective of this study was to examine current practice patterns of analgesia administration among emergency physicians (EPs) when caring for a patient with an acute abdomen. Cross sectional data were acquired by a survey mailed in October 1997 to 1,000 American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) members from a purchased ACEP mailing list which contained 1,000 randomized ACEP members. A repeat survey was sent to nonresponders 2 months later and a random subset of recurrent nonresponders were telephoned. ⋯ Although eighty-five percent felt that the conservative administration of pain medication did not change important physical findings on the physical examination, 76% choose not to give an opiate analgesic until after the examination by a surgeon. Twenty-five percent of patients did not receive any pain medication in the department. In conclusion, although EPs report that the judicious administration of pain medication does not mask important examination findings, the majority wait until after the surgeon has evaluated the patient to deliver analgesics.
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The purpose of this study was to evaluate Emergency Medicine resident physicians' compliance with our institution's rapid sequence intubation (RSI) protocol by the use of videotape analysis. We conducted a prospective, observational study of Emergency Medicine resident physicians (EM 1,2,3) as they were videotaped performing RSI on medical and trauma patients. ⋯ The most common deviations from our standard RSI protocol concerned proper use of the Sellick maneuver (45%) and use of the end-tidal CO(2) detector (34%). Videotape analysis provides an objective measure of Emergency Medicine resident performance of RSI.
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The study objective was to determine emergency department (ED) patients' perceptions of the specialty of emergency medicine. We surveyed a convenience sample of adult ED patients regarding their knowledge of the specialty of emergency medicine. ⋯ Patients estimated ED physicians' mean annual mean salary to be $100,000 and 61% believe that ED physicians are hospital employees. In conclusion, the specialty of emergency medicine is not well understood by our patients.