The New Zealand medical journal
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Alcohol and injury: a survey in primary care settings.
Several high profile events in Dunedin have focused attention on alcohol-related harm in the city. We sought to obtain local information regarding alcohol use and drinking location in order to better inform planning for local strategies to reduce alcohol-related harm in the future. ⋯ These results provide new information with respect to the role of drinking location in alcohol-related harm, in particular the important role of drinking in private homes. It also demonstrates the association between alcohol and injury in primary care settings in New Zealand. The current review of the Sale of Liquor Act is timely and should consider restricting the availability of alcohol in on and off licensed premises in order to minimise hazardous drinking in a range of drinking locations.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Contemporary New Zealand coefficients for the Trauma Injury Severity Score: TRISS(NZ).
To develop local contemporary coefficients for the Trauma Injury Severity Score in New Zealand, TRISS(NZ), and to evaluate their performance at predicting survival against the original TRISS coefficients. ⋯ Both TRISS models accurately predicted survival for blunt mechanism trauma. However, TRISS(NZ) coefficients were statistically superior to TRISS coefficients. A strong case exists for replacing TRISS coefficients in the New Zealand benchmarking software with these updated TRISS(NZ) estimates.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Emergency Department utilisation: a natural experiment.
In February 2005 a new Emergency Department (ED) was opened at Waitakere Hospital in West Auckland, New Zealand. Part of the rationale for this was the expectation that it would reduce attendances to the four established EDs in the Auckland region. This study was undertaken to determine whether this happened. ⋯ The opening of a new ED may have contributed to an increase in total ED presentations seen within the region overall, with no corresponding reduction in attendances at neighbouring hospitals.