The New Zealand medical journal
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To analyse the clinical and operational indications for activating the Wellington Life Flight helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) against draft Ministry of Health (MOH) criteria. ⋯ Wellington HEMS offers advantage over the road ambulance when dispatched and utilised appropriately. The majority of missions satisfied the MOH activation criteria but time-saving issues became apparent. Changes to the Helicopter Dispatch Flowchart have been proposed as a result. Further studies are required to assess any improvement in HEMS response times as the service develops. This data provides a benchmark for audits of future operational and clinical performance.
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To measure emergency physicians' awareness, acceptance, access to and application of the Australasian Paracetamol Overdose Guidelines. ⋯ The application of poisons information guidelines by front-line medical staff is limited; innovative approaches to improve adherence to clinical management recommendations need to be considered.
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To determine the impact of alcohol-related presentations on the Christchurch Hospital Emergency Department (ED). ⋯ Alcohol-related presentations had a significant impact on the ED, particularly on weekends. Teenagers, young adults and middle-aged adults contributed to the alcohol-related patient impact on weekends. Male patients were a significant burden on Saturday evening and night shifts.
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To determine if primary care clinicians would report medication errors using a new web-based system, and to obtain data illustrating the potential of the information collected to improve medication safety. ⋯ Primary care clinicians who volunteered for the pilot were willing and able to use the MERP system to report medication errors. The standardised data obtained through MERP enables rapid analysis and has the potential to inform initiatives for improving patient safety.
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The last decade has seen increasing measures aimed at regulating the influence of 'Big Pharma' following a number of scandals relating to unethical marketing. Despite these international trends, New Zealand continues to tolerate direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medication, a controversial pharmaceutical marketing strategy that has been prohibited in all but two countries in the industrialised world. While the pharmaceutical industry asserts that DTCA is informational and empowers consumers, in this viewpoint article we argue that DTCA is a heavily biased source of health information that favours representation of benefits over harms, and is associated with unnecessary prescribing, iatrogenic harm and increased costs to the taxpayer. ⋯ New Zealand remains an outlier in allowing DTCA to continue which, in our view, is a controversial and harmful practice. The available evidence suggests that consumers and health care professionals are generally opposed to DTCA. Therefore, we believe that the New Zealand government should review its stance on DTCA.