Articles: emergency-services.
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Pain induced by various types of procedures was assessed in the Paediatric Surgical Emergency Department at St Göran's Children's Hospital in Stockholm. Assessments of pain were obtained from the nurse, the parent, and children over 10 years of age by means of a visual analogue scale. In children aged 3-9 years, the Smiley Five-Face Scale was used. ⋯ There was a poor correlation between the parent's and child's estimates of pain. Parents are not well informed about the possibilities for pain treatment. Infants and children attending emergency rooms must also benefit from recent advances in the treatment of pain.
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For the majority of studies on hospital readmission rates, a readmission is deemed to have occurred if a patient was admitted within 28 days of the previous discharge date. This time period, however, has rarely been justified clinically or statistically and certainly not in Australia. In examining the patterns of readmissions to NSW public acute hospitals, this study provides statistical support for the use of a 28 day interval for total readmissions. The same finding applies to the four admission categories of medical, surgical, paediatrics, and obstetrics and gynaecology.
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Emergency departments (ED) are frequently utilized by patients with minor complaints. It has been a long-standing assumption in the medical community that this use was based on the inability of certain subgroups of the population to access primary care providers secondary to inability to pay. ⋯ Our findings suggest that ED utilization for minor complaints is not, as previously believed, higher in patients with the inability to pay primary care providers. Rather, subsidized patients (Medicare/Medicaid) appear to use the ED equally for major and minor complaints, while there is an increased utilization by commercially insured patients for minor illnesses and injuries, and a lower rate in patients who are self-pay.