Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Clashes between state security forces and civilian populations can lead to mass casualty incidents (MCI), challenging emergency medical service (EMS) systems, hospitals and medical management systems. In January 2006, clashes erupted between Israeli security forces and settlers, around the forced evacuation of the Amona outpost. ⋯ Large-scale clashes between state security forces and citizens may cause numerous injuries, even if firearms and explosives are not used. Despite the fact that almost all injuries were mild, the incident burdened local medical teams, EMS and Jerusalem hospitals. A predominance of head injuries was found among injured settlers and extremity injuries among injured security forces.
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Multicenter Study
Understanding patient experience of out-of-hours general practitioner services in South Wales: a qualitative study.
In the light of recent changes in the structure and provision of out-of-hours service in the UK, there is a need to re-assess the quality of care. One way to assess the quality of care is through patient experience. ⋯ Users' views and expectations may be used to inform service design and improve services, but the data also indicated a need to address user expectations of services, for example by enhanced information provision. Any such interventions to improve patient experience of out-of-hours care will need to be evaluated.
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Multicenter Study
Derivation of a risk assessment tool for emergency department patients with sickle cell disease.
Sickle cell patients commonly present to the emergency department (ED). Identifying those requiring admission and those who can safely be discharged is difficult. It was hypothesised that ED variables predictive of 96-h adverse sickle cell patient outcomes are identifiable. ⋯ Those ED variables predictive of 96-h adverse sickle cell patient outcomes can be identified and combined into a risk score. Prospective validation is necessary before any clinical decision-making based on this score.
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Comparative Study
Forget the blood, not the stone! Microhaematuria in acute urolithiasis and the role of early CT scanning.
Although urinalysis is simple and inexpensive to perform, the finding of microhaematuria on urinalysis may be unreliable for diagnosing urolithiasis. ⋯ The sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive value of microhaematuria on urinalysis for urolithiasis using unenhanced MDCT as the reference standard were low. This suggests that, when urolithiasis is clinically suspected, unenhanced MDCT is indicated without urinalysis being a prerequisite.