Rhode Island medical journal (2013)
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The number of opioid overdose events in Rhode Island has increased dramatically/catastrophically in the last decade; Rhode Island now has one of the highest per capita overdose death rates in the country. Healthcare professionals have an important role to play in the reduction of unintentional opioid overdose events. This article explores the medical community's response to the local opioid overdose epidemic and proposes strategies to create a more collaborative and comprehensive response. We emphasize the need for improvements in preventing, identifying and treating opioid addiction, providing overdose education and ensuring access to the rescue medicine naloxone.
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By training future physicians to care for patients with backgrounds different from their own, medical schools can help reduce health disparities. To address the need for education in this area, the leaders of the Family Medicine Clerkship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University developed the Social and Community Context of Care project, required of all medical students rotating through this clerkship. ⋯ Some interventions are actualized in later clerkships or independent study projects; one example, a health class for pregnant and parenting teens at Central Falls High School, is described here. If made a routine part of medical education, projects such as these may help medical students address the health disparities they will encounter in future practice.
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Emergency department (ED) patients frequently undergo chest x-ray (CXR) to evaluate for pneumonia. The rate of false-negative CXR in patients with pneumonia is unclear. ⋯ Patients with pneumonia may present with normal or nondiagnostic CXR, although false negatives may be less common than previously reported.