Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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Observational Study
An observational study of patients' attitudes to tattoos and piercings on their physicians: the ART study.
Perceptions regarding body art change over time as societal norms change. Previous research regarding patients' perceptions of physicians with exposed body art have been hampered by flaws in design methodology that incorporate biases into patient responses. This study was performed to determine whether emergency department (ED) patients perceived a difference in physician competence, professionalism, caring, approachability, trustworthiness and reliability in the setting of exposed body art. ⋯ In the clinical setting, having exposed body art does not significantly change patients' perception of the physician.
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Warming intravenous fluids is essential to prevent hypothermia in patients with trauma, especially when large volumes are administered. Prehospital and transport settings require fluid warmers to be small, energy efficient and independent of external power supply. We compared the warming properties and resistance to flow of currently available battery-operated fluid warmers. ⋯ We found significant differences between the fluid warmers: the use of the Buddy Lite should be limited to moderate input temperature and low flow rates. The use of the Thermal Angel is limited to low volumes due to battery capacity and low output temperature at extreme conditions. The Warrior provides the best warming performance at high infusion rates, as well as low input temperatures, and was able to warm the largest volumes in these conditions.
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A shortcut review of the literature was carried out to establish whether the Testicular Workup for Ischemia and Suspected Torsion (TWIST) score was reliable and accurate enough to rule out testicular torsion in the paediatric population. Four papers were found to be relevant to the clinical question following the below-described search strategies. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of those best papers are tabulated. It is concluded that based on the currently available evidence, a low-risk TWIST score has a high sensitivity and can be used in line with clinical judgement to rule out testicular torsion.