Emergency nurse : the journal of the RCN Accident and Emergency Nursing Association
-
Prompt treatment of patients with cardiorespiratory arrest can mean the difference between life and death. This article analyses the use of therapeutic hypothermia and aims to educate practitioners about its advantages and disadvantages as an immediate treatment.
-
Enabling triage nurses to request X-rays has a number of benefits for patients and staff. This article describes the development of a protocol and in-house training programme that allows triage nurses to assess patients with hand and wrist injuries, make a differential diagnosis of potential fracture and request X-rays. The protocol not only improves patients' journeys, but also empowers members of the emergency department's nursing team to develop new skills.
-
Former paediatric nurse, health visitor and bank nurse Paula Chell is now the manager of an urgent care unit in Stoke-on-Trent, where she has developed a 'nurse navigator' system to ensure that nurse practitioners and emergency care triage nurses can identify the appropriate forms of treatment for a wide range of patients
-
As a result of a merger between NHS Direct in Wales and the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, an initiative in which nurses assess the presenting symptoms of people who call for emergency services has been launched. This article describes how the initiative has ensured that patients receive the services they need, reduced the number of inappropriate ambulance call-outs and helped the nurses involved to improve their practice.
-
Christmas and New Year festivities notoriously result in increased attendance at emergency departments (EDs). The knock-on effect of this in Solihull, in the West Midlands, is that, when ambulance staff and police accompany patients to hospital, the locality is temporarily under-resourced by these services. To address this problem, a collaborative project was implemented to enable advanced clinical practitioners, with consultant support, to assess, treat and potentially discharge patients from a specially constructed emergency facility situated in Solihull town centre. This has reduced the number of ED admissions and transfers, and resulted in significant cost and time savings for the ambulance service.