Articles: emergency-services.
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Eur. J. Heart Fail. · Jun 2019
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyLung ultrasound integrated with clinical assessment for the diagnosis of acute decompensated heart failure in the emergency department: a randomized controlled trial.
Although acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) is a common cause of dyspnoea, its diagnosis still represents a challenge. Lung ultrasound (LUS) is an emerging point-of-care diagnostic tool, but its diagnostic performance for ADHF has not been evaluated in randomized studies. We evaluated, in patients with acute dyspnoea, accuracy and clinical usefulness of combining LUS with clinical assessment compared to the use of chest radiography (CXR) and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in conjunction with clinical evaluation. ⋯ Integration of LUS with clinical assessment for the diagnosis of ADHF in the emergency department seems to be more accurate than the current diagnostic approach based on CXR and NT-proBNP.
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Multicenter Study
Critical Review, Development and Testing of a Taxonomy for Adverse Events and Near Misses in the Emergency Department.
An adverse event (AE) is a physical harm experienced by a patient due to health care, requiring intervention. Describing and categorizing AEs is important for quality and safety assessment and identifying areas for improvement. Safety science suggests that improvement efforts should focus on preventing and mitigating harm rather than on error, which is commonplace but infrequently leads to AEs. Most taxonomies fail to describe harm experienced by patients (e.g., hypoxia, hemorrhage, anaphylaxis), focusing instead on errors, and use categorizations that are too broad to be useful (e.g., "communication error"). We set out to create a patient-centered, emergency department (ED)-specific framework for describing AEs and near misses to advance quality and safety in the acute care setting. ⋯ We developed a taxonomy of AEs and near misses for the ED, modified from an existing framework. Testing of the tool with minimal training yielded high performance and good inter-rater reliability. This taxonomy can be adapted and modified by EDs seeking to enhance their quality and safety reviews and characterize harm occurring in their EDs for quality improvement purposes.
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Multicenter Study
Sepsis Presenting in Hospitals versus Emergency Departments: Demographic, Resuscitation, and Outcome Patterns in a Multicenter Retrospective Cohort.
Differences between hospital-presenting sepsis (HPS) and emergency department-presenting sepsis (EDPS) are not well described. ⋯ HPS differed from EDPS by admission source, comorbidities, and clinical presentation. These patients received markedly less timely initial resuscitation; this disparity explained a moderate proportion of mortality differences.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Paediatric procedural sedation and analgesia by emergency physicians in a country with a recent establishment of emergency medicine.
Paediatric patients receive less procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) in the emergency department compared with adults, especially in countries where emergency medicine is at an early stage of development. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the adverse events and efficacy of paediatric PSA in a country with a recent establishment of emergency medicine and to describe which factors aided implementation. ⋯ Paediatric PSA provided by the first EPs in The Netherlands showed appropriate levels of sedation and analgesia with a high rate of procedure completion and a low rate of adverse events. Our paper suggests that EPs provided with a proper infrastructure of mentorship, training and guidelines can implement effective paediatric PSA.
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Multicenter Study
Capturing Emergency Department Discharge Quality with the Care Transitions Measure: A Pilot Study.
Recent attention has been given to developing measures to capture the quality of ED transitions of care. We examined the utility of a patient-reported measure of transitional care, the Care Transitions Measure-3 (CTM-3), in the ED setting and its association with outcomes of care after ED discharge. ⋯ The CTM-3 is associated with outcomes of care after an ED visit, including ED return visits and medication adherence, and may have utility as a patient-reported measure of ED transitions of care.