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ED managers who treat pediatric patients should always have their staff weigh them in kilograms, since that method is the one used to arrived at dosing guidelines, noted experts speaking at a April 11, 2008, teleconference conducted by The Joint Commission.
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Every year The Joint Commission (TJC) identifies those standards and requirements that were most frequently identified as "not compliant" for the previous six-month period. For the most recent reporting period, Jan. 1, 2007, through June 30, 2007, the standard with the lowest compliance rate for hospitals was the National Patient Safety Goal for medication labeling, with a compliance rate of 17%.
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The New York State Supreme Court currently is hearing a case that addresses a dilemma many ED managers face every day: When is it permissible to force a patient to receive treatment?
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When patients are discharged from the ED at Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar, MN, they never need to worry about how and where to obtain their take-home meds. Since Sept. 19, 2007, they have been able to obtain their prescription meds directly from a "vending machine" located in the department and operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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In the preamble to the new Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) regulations of 2003, some commenters stated that some physicians may choose to come to a hospital to see private patients at times when they are not shown as being on call under the listing the hospital maintains for EMTALA purposes, notes Alan Steinberg, Esq., an attorney with Horty Springer in Pittsburgh.
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If an emergency physician is arrested for assaulting a patient or for inappropriate sexual conduct, there is potential liability exposure for both the hospital where the ED is located and the emergency medicine (EM) group, says Thomas H. Taylor, a health care attorney at LaCrosse, WI-based Johns Flaherty.
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With advances in medical science, patients with serious congenital diseases are living into adulthood. Where once cystic fibrosis patients died in infancy, patients now live into their 40s. Although many of the standard treatments for COPD apply to cystic fibrosis, there are specific differences in management, which this monograph highlights.
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Casserly and colleagues administered a case-based questionnaire to physician and nursing staffs at 2 large teaching hospitals in Ireland, to determine their knowledge and experience with respect to a common and potentially deadly event in mechanically ventilated patients with fresh tracheostomies: dislodgement of the tube from the airway during vigorous coughing.
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Despite the large role that vasopressors play in the management of septic shock, an unfortunately common problem associated with high mortality, few data exist to support using one vasopressor regimen over another.
