Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2005
Witnessing invasive paediatric procedures, including resuscitation, in the emergency department: a parental perspective.
To determine whether parents prefer to be present during invasive procedures performed on their children in the ED. ⋯ Most parents surveyed would want to be present when invasive procedures are performed on their children in the ED. With increasing invasiveness, parental desire to be present decreased. However, the overwhelming majority of parents would want to be in attendance during procedural sedation or resuscitation.
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To determine the ED consumers' level of understanding, acceptance and desire for knowledge regarding the Australasian Triage Scale (ATS), and to determine the ED staff's attitudes towards open provision of ATS information. ⋯ Patients do not understand the ATS well, and would like to be provided with more specific initial and ongoing information, but staff uncertainty needs to be overcome before consumers' wishes can be better addressed.
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To identify the reasons why patients with chest pain delay in seeking hospital medical care and do or do not use an ambulance. ⋯ Education programmes should continue to emphasize that chest pain is a potential medical emergency and an ambulance should be called. GPs should consider developing an action plan to manage patients presenting with chest pain.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2005
Clinical TrialEmergency physicians can reliably assess emergency department patient cardiac output using the USCOM continuous wave Doppler cardiac output monitor.
1 To develop a training package for ultrasonic cardiac output monitor (USCOM) cardiac output assessments and determine the number of proctored studies necessary for skill acquisition. 2 To develop criteria for acceptance of cardiac output results obtained with the USCOM. 3 To evaluate the reliability of USCOM cardiac output assessments in the ED. ⋯ Emergency physicians with no prior ultrasonographic experience can be trained to obtain reliable cardiac output estimations upon conscious ED patients with the USCOM over the course of 20 patient assessments.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2005
Update on the fellowship exam and its relation to modern educational principles and clinical competency.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine is committed to a long term process of quality improvement in the fellowship examination and the training programme leading up to it. The process of quality improvement and the rationale for current and future processes are not always clear to the fellowship as a whole. ⋯ More research is required into the relevance of each component of the fellowship exam and its relation to clinical competency, key competencies and good clinical practice. Any subsequent changes to the exam structure must take into account the evidence and be balanced by what is practicable, reasonable and deliverable.