Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
Cervical cancer (CC) is preventable. CC screening decreases CC mortality. Emergency department (ED) patients are at disproportionately high risk for nonadherence with CC screening recommendations. The ED, therefore, is a target-rich environment for interventions to promote CC screening. ⋯ This study demonstrates that both of the evaluated low-intensity ED-based interventions significantly increase subsequent CC screening uptake compared to historical controls. The higher intensity intervention significantly increased screening uptake compared to the lower intensity intervention among women ≥40 years old.
-
Prehospital emergencies require providers to rapidly identify patients' medical condition and determine treatment needs. We tested whether medics' initial, written impressions of patient condition contain information that can help identify patients who require prehospital lifesaving interventions (LSI) prior to or during transport. ⋯ ML based on free-text medic impressions can help identify patient need for prehospital LSI. We discuss future work, such as applying similar methods to 9-1-1 call requests, and potential applications, including voice-to-text translation of medic impressions.
-
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Prior research suggests that 10% of people who died by suicide received some form of emergency department (ED) treatment in the 2 months preceding death. The risk of attempted suicide is high during transition back to the community after discharge from the ED, so this is an important opportunity to develop effective empirically validated prevention methods. However, the physical layout and crowded nature of most contemporary EDs, resulting in high rates of "hallway bed" assignments, presents some ethical challenges to conducting the requisite behavioral health research in ED settings. ⋯ This example illustrates the ethical considerations when enrolling patients who occupy a hallway bed into research and the value of a collaborative/problem solving focused dialogue between investigators, ethicists, and IRB personnel.