Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2018
Morale, stress and coping strategies of staff working in the emergency department: A comparison of two different-sized departments.
Clinical staff in EDs are subject to a range of stressors. The objective of this study was to describe and compare clinical staff perceptions of their ED's working environment across two different Australian EDs. ⋯ These findings are the first multi-site and multidisciplinary examinations of Australian ED staff perceptions, improving our understanding of staff stressors and coping strategies and highlighting similarities across different EDs. These data support the development and implementation of strategies to improve ED working environments to help ensure professional longevity of ED staff.
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Gender equality and workforce diversity has recently been in the forefront of College discussions. Reasons for the difference between various groups may not be as they initially appeared. The results of comparing the outcome between two groups can sometimes be confounded and even reversed by an unrecognised third variable. ⋯ Secondly, a strong association between Department and gender: females tended to apply to Departments with lower admission rates. The explanation of differences between groups can be multifactorial. A search for possible confounders will assist in this understanding. This could apply whenever two groups initially appear to differ, but on closer analysis this difference is either unfounded, or even reversed by reference to a third, confounding variable.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2018
Prehospital analgesic choice in injured patients does not impact on rates of vomiting: Experience from a New South Wales primary retrieval service.
This study aimed to explore the analgesic regimes adopted in our contemporary retrieval practice and the incidence of vomiting in ED after prehospital analgesic use. ⋯ The frequency of vomiting in the retrieved patients observed in our study was less than previously reported in the literature. Opioids still prevailed over ketamine as the preferred initial analgesic, with ketamine most commonly used as an adjunct. Multi-centre trials in this field would be preferable in future in view of the relatively low incidence of vomiting in retrieved trauma patients.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2018
'What the hell is water?' How to use deliberate clinical inertia in common emergency department situations.
Appropriate deliberate clinical inertia refers to the art of doing nothing as a positive clinical response. It includes shared decision-making to improve patient care with the use of clinical judgement. ⋯ The insertion of peripheral intravenous cannulae, investigating patients with suspected renal colic and the investigation of low risk chest pain are all opportunities for the thoughtful clinician to 'stand there' and use effective patient communication to avoid low value tests and procedures. Awareness is key to identifying these opportunities to practice deliberate clinical inertia, as many of the situations may be so much a part of our environment that they are hidden in plain view.
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Emerg Med Australas · Jun 2018
Impact of interpersonal relations on learning and development of professional identity: A study of residents' perceptions.
Informal learning includes all occurrences during one's life when learning is not deliberate. Prior research on informal learning in healthcare contexts examined learning happening outside of the formal curriculum, yet still in the workplace. This study explores residents' perceptions about extracurricular factors outside of the workplace that contribute to their learning and development of professional identity, whether interpersonal relations are recognised as such factors, and positive and negative impacts of interpersonal relations. ⋯ Several extracurricular factors outside of the workplace contribute to resident learning and identity development, including interpersonal relations, which have positive and negative impacts. The most often noted negative impact of interpersonal relations outside of work between residents and faculty related to perceived lapses in teaching skills.