Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Inequities in pediatric emergency department (ED) care may be influenced by disparities in clinician communication. We sought to examine, from the perspective of parents from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds, how clinician-parent communication is characterized during pediatric ED visits. ⋯ These narratives demonstrate ways in which experienced racism, both past and present, may inform how parents receive and respond to gaps in PCC. Communication focused interventions that adapt a race-conscious perspective may have a role in promoting health equity.
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The objective was to investigate the predictive ability of traditional clinical, radiological scores, and combined grading systems for 28-day mortality in patients with nontraumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). ⋯ Although the GCS and Ogilvy-Carter scales effectively distinguished survivors from nonsurvivors, they were not independent predictors of mortality. The WFNS scale was identified as the most reliable predictor of mortality in aneurysmal SAH patients, followed by the mFS and HHS.
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The rate of patients who leave without being seen (LWBS) from an emergency department (ED) is a common measurement of quality, operational efficiency, and patient satisfaction. We hypothesized that adding a nonclinical staff role, guest service ambassadors (GSA), to the ED waiting room would decrease LWBS rates and reduce existing differences by race, ethnicity, sex, and primary language for ED patients. ⋯ Although some disparities remain, our study suggests that GSAs may provide an effective strategy to reduce the overall LWBS rate and reduce disparities across diverse demographic groups including BIPOC and female patients.
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Following a review of accepted submissions for this special issue of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM)'s collected papers on diagnosis, we offer a commentary on the variety of reports. We use the metaphor of Newton's demonstration that a complex percept like the rainbow can be broken down by prisms, into a collection of different wavelengths of light. Like Feynman, we believe that the beauty of something may be revealed and augmented by reducing it to its constituent parts.