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Articles Tagged With: emergency

  • ED nurses check off tasks when JCAHO comes

    The minute you learn that accreditation surveyors are on site, you probably have a "wish list" of tasks that should be done immediately. At Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR, ED nurses created checklists for technicians, nurses, physicians, and health unit coordinators to use.
  • Tip of the Month: Give patients an extra thank you after a long wait

    Long waits are the most common cause of patient complaints in many EDs, so why not give patients a special "thank you" when wait times are long?
  • Cut LOS for your patients who don't speak English

    When a Spanish-speaking man approached ED nurses at Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare in Memphis, TN, pointing to his chest, nurses immediately called for translation services, but the interpreter was tied up with another patient elsewhere in the hospital.
  • Pediatric Corner: Obese children at risk for wrong weight estimation

    Many emergency nurses routinely use the color-coded Broselow Pediatric Emergency tape to obtain medication dosages for pediatric patients who can't be weighed.
  • Journal Review

    When ED patients watched an educational video or read a brochure about pain assessment, the patient's self-report of pain often was lower compared to previous self-reports, says this study from St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo, OH.
  • A FREE white paper for you

    AHC Media appreciates the faith you have placed in us to provide you with practical, authoritative information. As a token of our gratitude for your support, we would like to provide you with the free white paper, "The Joint Commission: What Hospitals Can Expect in 2007."
  • System says ED patients will have zero wait times

    Not content with a 30-minute guarantee that it has been offering its ED patients for six years, Michigan's Oakwood Healthcare System has declared that patients will now be seen as soon as they walk though the ED doors. So far, so good, say ED staffers, who concede that the new approach could not have been accomplished by the ED alone.
  • Multivariable testing cuts door-to-doc times by 24%

    Members of the ED staff at Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville, TN, have cut the door-to-doc time from one hour to 45 minutes, and they hope to get it below 30 minutes, following a new initiative using a process called multivariable testing (MVT).
  • New evidence-based MTBI discharge form proposed

    Citing a lack of consistency and complete information in ED discharge forms for patients with mild-trauma brain injury (MTBI), researchers at the University of Buffalo (NY) have proposed a new discharge form they say reflects the key risk factors outlined in research literature. Their findings are reported in the August 2006 issue of Brain Injury.
  • One-third of EDs may fail to meet 90-minute target for heart attack patients

    Noting that only about one-third of hospitals provide emergency care to heart attack patients quickly enough to meet scientific guidelines for saving lives, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) has debuted a campaign called "D2B: An Alliance for Quality," aimed at helping EDs and their hospitals cut an average of 30 minutes off their door-to-balloon (D2B) times by adopting six core strategies: