Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic with similar pharmacologic properties to droperidol. Due to the current droperidol shortage, the authors' clinical practice has been to substitute olanzapine for droperidol in many situations. At this time, olanzapine is U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for oral and intramuscular (IM) use only, but due to its increased utility, intravenous (IV) olanzapine was recently approved for use in the study emergency department (ED). ⋯ In this large retrospective review, IV olanzapine appears to be a safe in the management of a variety of ED indications. Hypoxia was common, but serious airway compromise was rare.
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The effect of emergency medicine (EM) residents on the clinical efficiency of attending physicians is controversial. The authors hypothesized that implementing a new EM residency program would result in an increase in relative value units (RVUs) generated per hour by attending physicians and decrease staffing requirements. ⋯ The implementation of an EM residency program had a positive effect on the clinical efficiency of attending physicians and decreased staffing requirements.