Emergency Medicine - Adult and Pediatric
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Diverticulitis: Evaluation and Management
As the population ages, this disease will increase. Here's what the ED physician needs to know.
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Patient passports aim to speed appropriate care for medically complex children presenting to ED
A medically complex child can decompensate quickly — even if he or she appears to be quite healthy. But grasping the urgency of such a patient’s condition can be especially difficult for triage nurses in the ED who may have never laid eyes on the child before, let alone reviewed his or her lengthy medical history. It’s a problem that Mattel Children’s Hospital at Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, is attempting to solve through the development and dissemination of what administrators are calling a patient passport.
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Mount Sinai leverages smartphone technology, aiming to boost care, coordination of ED patients while also trimming costs
Using telemedicine in the care and treatment of stroke patients is widely used and accepted at this point; the approach facilitates quick access to expert consultations when time to treatment is a critical factor.
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Acute Shoulder Injury
MONOGRAPH: Musculoskeletal injuries or pain complaints comprise a large portion of visits to EDs every year.
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Updates in Pediatric Trauma, Part I
MONOGRAPH: New advances in diagnostic evaluation and treatment for the No. 1 cause of death and disability in children and adolescents.
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Misplaced NG tubes a major patient safety risk
Misplaced nasogastric and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tubes pose a serious threat to patient safety and a liability risk for hospitals. New technology might improve the detection of misplaced tubes.
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Failure to diagnose infection causes toddler death and yields verdict of $1.72 million
Plaintiffs’ 3-month-old daughter was taken to the hospital with a high fever and elevated pulse rate. The ED physician diagnosed an ear infection and discharged the infant with a prescription for antibiotics. Days later she was diagnosed with pneumococcal meningitis, hypoxic brain injury, and hydrocephalus. She lived for 20 more months. Plaintiffs sued the hospital and the ED physician, and they won a verdict of joint and several liability for $1.7 million.
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Urinary Tract Infection
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are common in the emergency department. In fact, UTIs were the most common bacterial infection encountered in ambulatory settings in 2007 and the most common primary diagnosis for women visiting the emergency department.
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State Medical Board Complaint Can Fuel ED Med/Mal Suit, and Vice Versa: Don’t “Go It Alone”
It’s difficult to imagine most emergency physicians (EPs) choosing to defend themselves in a malpractice lawsuit. However, many respond to state medical board investigations without legal representation. “Many medical board complaints end up being more serious than medical malpractice lawsuits,” says Ellen M. Voss, JD, a medical malpractice defense attorney at Williams Kastner in Portland, OR.
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EPs Seeing Many More Incidental Findings: Take Steps to Reduce Liability
Failure to notify patients and their primary care providers of incidental radiology findings “definitely poses significant medicolegal liability for the emergency physician (EP),” according to Sayon Dutta, MD, an attending physician in the emergency department (ED) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.