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This article will review the current literature about blast injuries. Explosions have the potential to cause multi-system injuries involving multiple patients simultaneously. The potential mechanisms of injury, early signs of these injuries, and the natural course of the problems caused by explosive blasts will be discussed.
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Low back pain is a frequent patient complaint in the emergency department. In fact, the same patients may visit the ED repetitively with the same complaint. It is easy to be assuaged into thinking that these patients are merely seeking drugs, but to make that assumption can lead a clinician to miss the cauda equina syndrome and may result in a malpractice action if efforts are not taken to identify any new symptoms and signs in a patient with low back pain. This issue provides the reader with a solid understanding of diagnosing and caring for patients with cauda equina syndrome in the ED and the medicolegal issues that arise from failing to diagnose and appropriately treat these patients.
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Physicians and nurse managers in emergency medicine stand a better change of boosting their income through incentive packages, as opposed to straight salary increases, according to industry observers. And if you did receive a significant salary boost in the past year, chances are youre an ED nurse manager not a physician manager.
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As EDs have grown and become overcrowded, environment of care issues also have grown, particularly security concerns, says Dean Samet, associate director/senior engineer of accreditation operations/Standards Interpretation Group at the Joint Commission.
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If several patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) started coming into your ED, would you be prepared to separate them? Could you triage to alternative off-site areas, if needed? As of Jan. 1, 2005, youd better be prepared.
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A new planning guide funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is designed to help communities make sure they have needed drugs and vaccines in the event of a natural epidemic or bioterrorist attack.
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As the ED staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allen-town, PA, have learned, its how you respond to benchmarking data that determines success. For example, to speed up admissions, it was necessary to address virtual capacity issues.
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It may seem logical to blame your overcrowding problems on understaffing, but as the ED staff at the 302-bed North Shore University Hospital at Forest Hills in Queens, NY, found out, that may not always lead you to the root of your problems. Learning that lesson, and finding the real cause of their problems, enabled them to slash their average cycle time from 187 minutes to 118 minutes.
