Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study
Addressing Gender Inequities: Creation of a Multi-Institutional Consortium of Women Physicians in Academic Emergency Medicine.
Gender inequity is pervasive in medicine, including emergency medicine (EM), and is well documented in workforce representation, leadership, financial compensation, and resource allocation. The reasons for gender inequities in medicine, including academic EM, are multifactorial and include disadvantageous institutional parental, family, and promotion policies; workplace environment and culture; implicit biases; and a paucity of women physician leader role models, mentors, and sponsors. To address some of the challenges of gender inequities and career advancement for women in academic EM, we established an innovative, peer-driven, multi-institutional consortium of women EM faculty employed at four distinct hospitals affiliated with one medical school. ⋯ The consortium created a collaborative community designed specifically to enrich career development for women in academic EM, with a formal organizational structure to connect faculty from four hospitals under one academic institution. The objective of this report is to describe the creation of this cross-institutional consortium focused on career development, academic productivity, and networking and sharing best practices for work-life integration for academic EM women faculty. This consortium-building model could be used to enhance existing institutional career development structures for women and other physician communities in academic medicine with unique career advancement challenges.
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Multicenter Study
Development and External Validation of the KIIDS-TBI Tool for Managing Children with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Intracranial Injuries.
Clinical decision support (CDS) may improve the postneuroimaging management of children with mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) and intracranial injuries. While the CHIIDA score has been proposed for this purpose, a more sensitive risk model may have broader use. Consequently, this study's objectives were to: (1) develop a new risk model with improved sensitivity compared to the CHIIDA model and (2) externally validate the new model and CHIIDA model in a multicenter data set. ⋯ The KIIDS-TBI model has high sensitivity and moderate specificity for risk stratifying children with mTBI and intracranial injuries. Use of this CDS tool may help improve the safe, resource-efficient management of this important patient population.
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Multicenter Study
Serious diagnoses at revisits in children discharged from the emergency department with back pain.
Back pain is often benign but can be a harbinger for serious pathology. Little is known about the outcome in children with back pain but no serious diagnoses detected at the initial visit. We sought to estimate the rate of serious diagnoses at revisits among children initially discharged from the emergency department (ED) with back pain. ⋯ In pediatric patients discharged from the ED with a diagnosis of back pain and no serious or trauma diagnoses, there is a low rate of serious pathology on revisits. Of the serious diagnoses identified, high-acuity diseases were rare. For the subset of patients with clinical suspicion for serious pathology but none identified at the index visit, this represents an opportunity for further research to optimize their management.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Pathway with single-dose long-acting intravenous antibiotic reduces emergency department hospitalizations of patients with skin infections.
Emergency department (ED) patients with serious skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are often hospitalized to receive intravenous (IV) antibiotics. Appropriate patients may avoid admission following a single-dose, long-acting IV antibiotic. ⋯ Implementation of an ED SSTI clinical pathway for patient selection and follow-up that included use of a single-dose, long-acting IV antibiotic was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalization rate for stable patients with moderately severe infections. Registration: NCT02961764.
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Multicenter Study
PECARN algorithms for minor head trauma: Risk stratification estimates from a prospective PREDICT cohort study.
The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) head trauma clinical decision rules informed the development of algorithms that risk stratify the management of children based on their risk of clinically important traumatic brain injury (ciTBI). We aimed to determine the rate of ciTBI for each PECARN algorithm risk group in an external cohort of patients and that of ciTBI associated with different combinations of high- or intermediate-risk predictors. ⋯ The risk estimates of ciTBI for each of the PECARN algorithms risk group were consistent with the original PECARN study. The risk estimates of ciTBI within the high- and intermediate-risk predictors will help further refine clinical judgment and decision making on neuroimaging.