Annals of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study
Antibiotic use for emergency department patients with acute diarrhea: Prescribing practices, patient expectations, and patient satisfaction.
Physicians commonly prescribe antibiotics to meet patient expectations, even when antimicrobials are unnecessary. We evaluated factors emergency physicians consider in prescribing antibiotics to patients with diarrhea and examined patient expectations, physician-perceived patient expectations, and patient satisfaction. ⋯ Physicians in academic EDs prescribe antibiotics for acute diarrhea to about 1 patient in 4 and are more likely to do so if signs or symptoms compatible with bacterial enteritis are present. Physicians' assessments of patients' expectations for therapy were accurate in only 1 of 3 patients but were nevertheless associated with antibiotic prescription. Patient satisfaction was weakly associated with receipt of antibiotics.
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The Institute of Medicine report in 1999 spurred a national movement in patient safety and focused attention on medical error as a significant cause of preventable injury and death. Throughout the past decade, the medical community has gradually acknowledged the fallibility of medical science and imperfections of our health care organizations. Before significant progress can be made to improve safety in health care, we must better understand the sources of error. ⋯ The framework is, in its most basic form, a comprehensive checklist of all the sources of error uncovered in the course of investigating hundreds of cases referred to Stroger Hospital's emergency medicine quality assurance committee throughout the past decade. It begins with a look at error in the ED and then looks beyond the ED to examine error in the context of the wider health care system. It incorporates ideas found in safety engineering, transportation safety, human factors engineering, and our own experience in an urban, public, teaching hospital ED.
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We describe the effects of quetiapine in overdose. ⋯ Quetiapine overdose causes central nervous system depression and sinus tachycardia. In large overdoses, patients may require intubation and ventilation for associated respiratory depression. Although a prolonged QTc occurs, its clinical significance is unclear because it is most likely caused by an overcorrection caused by the tachycardia. In our experience, a reported dose of less than 3 g for patients who are not drowsy (with a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 15) at least 4 hours after ingestion and who did not coingest another toxic agent defined a group not requiring ICU admission or inpatient admission greater than 24 hours.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Sedation for cardioversion in the emergency department: analysis of effectiveness in four protocols.
We compare effectiveness, adverse effects, and recovery times of propofol, etomidate, and midazolam (with and without flumazenil) for cardioversion in the emergency department (ED). ⋯ Four sedative regimens (propofol, etomidate, midazolam, and midazolam/flumazenil) were uniformly effective in facilitating ED cardioversion in hemodynamically stable adults. Propofol was well tolerated and lacked the myoclonus, prolonged sedation, and resedation noted with the latter 3 respective groups. Larger studies are needed to generalize these conclusions.
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Comparative Study
Incidence of transient hypoxia and pulse rate reactivity during paramedic rapid sequence intubation.
We determine the incidence of desaturation and pulse rate reactivity during paramedic rapid sequence intubation of patients with severe head injuries (Glasgow Coma Scale score