Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Multicenter Study
Standards of practice in UK emergency departments before, during and after conscious sedation.
The agents used for conscious sedation are well known to have potentially serious complications. It is recommended that patients receiving them should be objectively monitored until it is deemed safe. An audit of our departmental practices led us to conduct a national questionnaire to determine how we compared with other units in the UK. ⋯ Certain practices were applied in most departments but none were universal, with most being subject to wide variation. The local results reflected this, suggesting that a variation may exist both within and between individual units.