Articles: emergency-services.
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Discharge planning update · Jul 1991
The ER social worker: cost-effective, crisis-oriented discharge planning--and more.
The emergency room social worker exemplifies, in a crisis-oriented context, the ability of social workers to make a difference, in real terms, in situations of patient and family need--physical, environmental, and emotional. Our hospital has come to see the opportunity for community care and support, coupled nicely with the ability to decrease burdensome and costly social admissions and lessen time patients spend waiting in the ER. Patients and their families are well served in our ER. ⋯ ER social workers have also served as clinical supervisors for graduate social work students in field placements. The ER social worker serves as a valued extension in our discharge planning. We recommend this role for your consideration.
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To describe the clinical and ECG features of cocaine abusers evaluated in the emergency department and admitted to the medical coronary care unit with chest pain consistent with myocardial ischemia. ⋯ Our findings confirm a small but significant incidence of myocardial infarction in cocaine abusers presenting to the ED with chest pain. The chronicity of cocaine abuse, the persistence of ECG abnormalities, and the variable temporal relationship of chest pain to cocaine abuse suggest possible chronic myocardial changes as etiologies of ischemia.
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Southern medical journal · Jun 1991
Comparative StudyPoison control centers: can their value be measured?
Most regions of the United States are served by poison control centers that provide 24-hour toxicologic guidance resulting in the home management of most poison exposures. It has been suggested that without public access to a poison control hotline the majority of poison-exposed patients would seek medical care in emergency departments or other outpatient visits. ⋯ Before the closing of the Louisiana center, Alabama and Louisiana triage patterns for poison exposures were nearly identical. The maximum annual cost attributable to unnecessary outpatient service utilization in Louisiana was estimated to be $1.4 million, an amount more than three times the annual poison control center state appropriation.