Articles: emergency-services.
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Dec 2023
An augmented reality mobile application for weight estimation in paediatric patients: A prospective single-blinded cross-sectional study.
Determining the exact weight of children is a challenging task during emergency situations. Current guidelines recommend the use of length-based weight-estimating tapes. However, healthcare providers must either always carry the tapes or take time to locate them. Moreover, they may not know how to use them. To address these issues, we developed an augmented reality smartphone application for length-based weight estimation called the Paediatric Augmented Reality Scale (PARS). We evaluated its performance and compared it to that of the Broselow tape (BT) and Paediatric Advanced Weight Prediction in the Emergency Room extra-long and extra-large (PAWPER-XL) tape methods. ⋯ PARS exhibited a modestly better performance than BT and PAWPER-XL in estimating body weight. PARS-estimated body weights correlated fairly accurately with the actual body weights. PARS holds potential utility in paediatric emergencies.
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Long waiting times in the ED have been shown to cause negative outcomes for patients. This study aims to assess the effect in reducing length of stay of (1) preventing low-acuity attenders from attending the ED and (2) diverting low-acuity attenders at triage to a colocated general practice (GP) service. ⋯ Reducing the proportion of low-acuity attenders at the ED could have an impact on the time in the ED for higher acuity patients due to their use of shared resources, but is insufficient alone to meet current targets. The simulation model could be adapted for further analyses to understand which other changes would be needed to meet current government targets.
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Frequent emergency department (ED) users with mental health issues are particularly vulnerable patients, who often receive insufficient or inadequate outpatient care. This systematic review identified and evaluated studies on ED-based interventions to reduce acute care use by this population, while improving outpatient service use and patient outcomes. Searches were conducted in five databases for studies published between January 1, 2000, and April 30, 2022. ⋯ Ten studies assessed outcomes related to use of other services than ED, mainly hospitalizations, while five assessed patients' clinical conditions and three, social conditions (e.g., housing status). This review revealed that case management and care plan interventions, based in ED, decrease ED use among frequent users, while case management also showed promising results for outpatient service use and clinical and social outcomes. Thus, the results support continued deployment of intensive ED-based interventions for frequent ED users with mental health issues although firm conclusions regarding the effectiveness of these interventions, particularly outcomes related to services other than ED, require further investigation.