Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The consent and prescription compliance (COPRECO) study: does obtaining consent in the emergency department affect study results in a telephone follow-up study of medication compliance?
The objectives were to determine whether mandated research requirements for consent in the emergency department (ED) falsely distorts the results of a survey of patient-reported compliance with ED prescriptions and, in addition, to ascertain the level of patient compliance to medication instructions and find out the degree of displeasure expressed by patients called without prior consent. ⋯ Medicine noncompliance is a significant issue for patients discharged from the ED in this study. Although there was a trend toward greater compliance in patients who consented to the follow-up call, this did not reach statistical significance. ED patients do not object to receiving telephone follow-up for a research survey without giving prior consent.
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The objective was to determine effects of a modification in triage process on triage acuity distribution in general and among patients with conditions requiring time-sensitive therapy. ⋯ Monitoring for changes in the sensitivity of the triage process for detecting patients with potentially time-sensitive conditions should be considered when modifying triage processes. Further work should be done to determine if the decreased sensitivity seen in this study occurs in other institutions converting to ESI, and potential causative factors should be explored.