Emergency Medicine - Adult and Pediatric
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Mitigate Legal Risks Before Angry Patient Calls Attorney
Effective communication practices can mitigate malpractice risk in ED settings. Keep patients updated on the ED course, ensure patients and family are well-informed prior to leaving the ED, and encourage patients and family to vent frustration and anger.
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Did ED Personnel Review EMS Findings? If Not, Expect Negligence Allegations
To avoid trouble, create and follow a clearly defined process for how EMS gives information to ED personnel. Ensure that ED personnel receive complete information from field EMS providers. Further, EPs should review any EMS records available and consult with others who received verbal reports.
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When Closed Claims for Pediatric ED Patients Resulted in Plaintiff Payout
Appendicitis, cardiac or cardiorespiratory arrest, and disorder of male genital organs were the most common medical conditions triggering malpractice lawsuits involving pediatric ED patients, according to the authors of a recent analysis.
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Management of Burn Injuries
Burn injuries are complex injuries that the acute care physician must be prepared to assess and manage. In addition, an understanding of potential systemic effects from inhalation of toxic components in fires is critical to guide management. The authors provide a timely review of the critical aspects of assessment and management of burn patients.
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The Influenza Virus: Winter Is Coming
Influenza is an acute respiratory illness responsible for significant seasonal epidemics each year. Despite commonly being a self-limited illness, the virus causes significant morbidity and mortality. During the winter months, emergency physicians should maintain a high suspicion for influenza in patients presenting with an acute febrile respiratory illness.
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Pediatric Ocular Trauma: A Clinical Perspective
Eye trauma can be devastating to a child and challenging to the clinician. These authors review common traumatic eye injuries and provide tips for the clinical evaluation of our youngest patients.
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Limb Ischemia and Gangrene
Although many cases of extremity pain are the result of mild, self-limited issues, ischemia and gangrene are catastrophic causes of pain that initially can present with nondescript findings. To limit tissue loss and optimize patient outcomes, emergency physicians must be able to distinguish benign limb pain from the earliest stages of high-risk, life- and limb-threatening disease.
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Claims Allege Life-saving Information Was Hiding in Plain Sight
The patient history, labs, and radiology — that was the extent of the information available to EPs historically. EPs argue they do not have time to hunt for every possible piece of information that could have prevented a bad outcome. But that is beside the point when lawyers get involved. Critical information might be hiding in plain sight. Modules used by pathology or radiology are not always easily accessible, but ED providers should not expect a jury to be too sympathetic to this dilemma.
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Poor Nurse-EP Communication Pits Hospital Against EP
Conflicting deposition testimony bolsters any medical malpractice case. Communication gaps between EPs and ED nurses often become a central issue during malpractice litigation. Conflict over what, if anything, nurses communicated to the EP works to the plaintiff’s benefit.
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A Deeper Exploration of How ED Nurses Triage
Triage practices vary widely among emergency nurses and within EDs, according to the authors of a recent study. Researchers conducted focus group interviews with 26 ED nurses. ED nurses reported a pervasiveness of “quick look” triage techniques, which do not rely on physiologic data, to make acuity decisions. Participants described processes that were manipulations of the triage system to “fix” problems in ED flow rather than a standard application of a triage system.