Articles: emergency-services.
-
Multicenter Study
Section 136, The Mental Health Act 1983; levels of knowledge among accident and emergency doctors, senior nurses, and police constables.
Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 empowers the police to detain those suspected of being mentally ill in public places, and convey them to a place of safety. In practice, accident and emergency (A&E) departments are often used. The authors assessed levels of knowledge of section 136 between A&E doctors, senior nurses, and police constables. ⋯ The knowledge among A&E staff and the police of this difficult and complex piece of mental health legislation is poor and requires action through formal education and training. This study not only reflects the levels of knowledge within the groups, it may also reflect the different perceptions of each group as to their role and duties within section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
-
Multicenter Study
Communication loads on clinical staff in the emergency department.
To measure communication loads on clinical staff in an acute clinical setting, and to describe the pattern of informal and formal communication events, Australia. ⋯ Our results support the need for communication training in emergency departments and other similar workplaces. The combination of interruptions and multiple concurrent tasks may produce clinical errors by disrupting memory processes. About 90% of the information transactions observed involved interpersonal exchanges rather than interaction with formal information sources. This may put a low upper limit on the potential for improving information processes by introducing electronic medical records.
-
Multicenter Study
Injury surveillance in the ED: design, implementation, and analysis.
Comprehensive, population-based surveillance for nonfatal injuries requires uniform methods for data collection from multiple hospitals. To show issues related to design and implementation of multihospital, emergency department (ED), injury surveillance, a city-wide system in the United States is discussed. From October 1, 1995 to September 30, 1996 all injury-related ED visits among District of Columbia residents <3 years of age were ascertained at the 10 hospitals where city children routinely sought care. ⋯ Based on this experience, suggestions to facilitate design of multihospital, injury surveillance in other locations are offered. Importantly, injury-related visits were reliably ascertained from ED logs, and for most variables, a systematic sample of injury-related visits was representative of the total injured population. However, there is a need for more complete documentation of circumstances surrounding injuries and for standardization of data elements on ED logs and treatment records.
-
Multicenter Study
Spanish validation of an instrument to measure the quality of nursing care in hospital emergency units.
The article describes the translation and adaptation to Spanish of the Consumer Emergency Care Satisfaction Scale (CECSS), an instrument used to measure the quality of care nurses give in emergency units. Bilingual people using a translation-retrotranslation process performed the adaptation. ⋯ Content validity (judgment of expert nurses and patients) obtained a mean item-dimension suitability valuation of 6.1 and item-scale suitability of 5.5. As the Spanish version of the CECSS is comprehensible to patients, and reliability and validity are satisfactory, it provides a useful measure of the quality of nursing care.
-
We sought to determine whether knowledge of vital signs changes nurse triage designations (TDs). We also sought to determine whether patient age and ability to communicate modify the effect of vital signs on triage decisions. ⋯ In this sample, 92.1% of the nurses' TDs were not affected by the knowledge of patient vital signs. For the other 7.9%, including many patients from vulnerable populations, the vital signs changed the nurses' assessments of the patients' triage designation. Methods of triage that do not determine vital signs may not adequately reflect the urgency of the patient's presentation.