Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
ReviewReview article: Potential of medical scribes to allay the burden of documentation and enhance efficiency in Australian emergency departments.
The increasing burden of documentation experienced by doctors threatens the efficiency in EDs and increases the likelihood of documentation errors. Medical scribes afford the opportunity to allay this burden by removing a large component of the doctors' documentation task. Scribes have been embedded successfully in US EDs, and the effects have been mostly advantageous. The present paper provides a brief overview of the function of scribes and their potential contribution to Australian EDs.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Dispatcher-assisted cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol improves diagnosis and resuscitation recommendations for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Despite recent efforts, most people are not trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which has a major impact on survival following cardiac arrest (CA). We have set up a dispatcher-assisted CPR protocol at our call centre, based on international guidelines issued in 2010. The aim of our study was to evaluate the impact of this protocol on CA diagnosis and quantity of recommendations given by telephone dispatchers to untrained witnesses. ⋯ Implementation of a dispatcher-assisted CPR protocol was efficient in improving both CA diagnosis and CPR recommendations given to untrained witnesses for out-of-hospital CA with a very short time of dispatcher training. It is a simple and efficacious measure, at no additional cost and with the promises of improving prognosis following cardiac arrest in a centre not equipped with computerised dispatcher support programmes.
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Emerg Med Australas · Dec 2015
Applying palliative care principles and practice to emergency medicine.
Only recently has the potential (unmet) palliative care (PC) workload in the ED been recognised. While confident in PC symptom management, we underestimate the role of a palliative approach in non-cancer diagnoses and seek education in areas such as individual patient care pathways, ethical and legal issues and difficult conversations at the end of life. PC is best introduced early for a range of life-limiting cancer and non-cancer diagnoses. ⋯ This patient-centred, rather than disease-centred approach, is the essence of PC, and one that is easily incorporated into emergency practice. PC and disease-specific treatments can comfortably coexist, and with meticulous symptom management, may actually prolong life. PC is everyone's business, and emergency medicine needs to be part of it.