Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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The campaign against tobacco addiction and smoking continues to play an important role in public health. However, referrals to outpatient tobacco cessation programs by emergency physicians are rarely pursued by patients following discharge. This study explored cost as a barrier to follow-up. ⋯ Cost is unlikely to be the only barrier to pursing outpatient tobacco treatment after an ED visit. Further research is needed to determine the critical components of counseling and referral that maximize postdischarge treatment initiation.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Pediatric emergency health care providers' knowledge, attitudes, and experiences regarding emergency contraception.
The objective was to describe knowledge, attitudes, and experiences regarding emergency contraception (EC) among pediatric emergency health care providers (HCPs). ⋯ This study identified important HCP perceptions and barriers about EC provision in the pediatric ED. These findings may inform future efforts to improve EC provision for adolescents. Specifically, future studies to evaluate the differences in attitudes between nurses, physicians, and NPs, and the use of social judgment in EC provision, are warranted.
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The decision to admit a patient to the hospital after an emergency department (ED) visit is expensive, frequently not evidence-based, and variable. Outpatient critical pathways are a promising approach to reduce hospital admission after emergency care. Critical pathways exist to risk stratify patients for potentially serious diagnoses (e.g., acute myocardial infarction [AMI]) or evaluate response to therapy (e.g., community-acquired pneumonia) within a short time period (i.e., less than 36 hours), to determine if further hospital-based acute care is needed. ⋯ In this article, the authors propose a model of post-ED critical pathways, describe their role in emergency care, list common diagnoses that are amenable to critical pathways in the outpatient setting, and propose a research agenda to address barriers and solutions to increase the use of outpatient critical pathways. If emergency providers are to routinely conduct rapid evaluations in outpatient or observation settings, they must have several conditions at their disposal: 1) evidence-based tools to accurately risk stratify patients for protocolized care, 2) systems of care that reliably facilitate workup in the outpatient setting, and 3) a medical environment conducive to noninpatient pathways, with aligned risks and incentives among patients, providers, and payers. Increased use of critical pathways after emergency care is a potential way to improve the value of emergency care.
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With the 2010 federal health care reform passage, a renewed focus has emerged for the integration of electronic health records (EHRs) into the U. S. health care system. ⋯ Such mixed findings must be considered in the national push for rapid implementation of health IT. We present a research agenda addressing the major questions that are posed by the introduction of IT into ED care; these questions relate to interoperability, patient flow and integration into clinical work, real-time decision support, handoffs, safety-critical computing, and the interaction between IT systems and clinical workflows.
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The Script Concordance Test (SCT) is a new method of assessing clinical reasoning in the face of uncertainty. An SCT item consists of a short clinical vignette followed by an additional piece of information and asks how this new information affects the learner's decision regarding a possible diagnosis, investigational study, or therapy. Scoring is based on the item responses of a panel of experts in the field. This study attempts to provide additional validity evidence in the realm of emergency medicine (EM). ⋯ The SCT-EM shows promise as an assessment that can be used to measure clinical reasoning skills in the face of uncertainty. Future research will compare performance on the SCT to other measures of clinical reasoning abilities.