Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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Observation units (OBS) are becoming a common addition to the emergency department. The diagnostic and socioeconomic categories of patients admitted to the OBS unit resemble those seen in the emergency department. There are many advantages and disadvantages in establishing such a unit. Although OBS units provide improved patient care, current difficulties in reimbursement may delay their widespread acceptance.
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Prehospital care has undergone a significant evolution during the past two decades and has been transformed from a transportation service into an advanced life support (ALS) delivery system. Crucial to the quality of such a program is physician knowledge and medical control. ⋯ The resident physician is exposed to a number of varying emergency medical services (EMS) systems, administrative experiences, and most uniquely, functions as a paramedic within our own ALS EMS system. In this manner, we believe the resident best obtains an understanding of the environment, attitudes, and behavior of prehospital personnel.
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The occupational injury profile of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics is not well described. We retrospectively studied 254 injuries over a 3.5-year period in a busy urban EMS system. Low back strain was the most common injury (93/254, 36%), with EMTs suffering a significantly higher injury rate than paramedics (0.33 v 0.17 injuries/person-years at risk, P = .03). ⋯ Approximately 96 injuries accounted for 481 compensation days with low back strain the cause of 375 days (78%). Our findings suggest a high incidence of occupational injury in EMS personnel with EMTs and persons under 30 years of age at higher risk. Guidelines for prevention programs are suggested.
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As an initial step toward improving admission criteria to the medical intensive care unit (MICU), we examined Acute Physiologic and Chronic Health Evaluation scores and the diagnosis-adjusted mortality rates of 2419 medical patients, including those who received MICU consultation over a 6-month period. There was considerable overlap in the physiologic scores and the predicted mortality rates between those patients who were admitted to the MICU and those who were not. There was no discrete score or mortality rate at which triage to the MICU would have included most MICU patients but excluded most patients who survived without admission to the MICU. ⋯ Using a receiver operating characteristic curve, we demonstrated that diagnosis-adjusted mortality rates could predict as well as Acute Physiologic and Chronic Health Evaluation scores which patients would receive MICU admission and intervention. This suggests that, for different diagnoses, specific clinical variables and laboratory tests may have different predictive importance for MICU admission. Prospective models of clinical variables using receiver operating characteristic curves in various medical diseases may improve triage procedures.