From Academic Emergency Medicine: Objectives Emergency medical services (EMS) personnel commonly use systolic blood pressure (sBP) to triage and treat acutely ill patients. The definition of prehospital hypotension and its associated outcomes are poorly defined. The authors sought to determine the discrimination of prehospital sBP thresholds for 30-day mortality and to compare patient classification by […] Continue reading →

From the Journal of Emergency Medicine: Background Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding is a national problem. Initiating orders in triage has been shown to decrease length of stay (LOS), however, nurse, physician assistant, and attending physician advanced triage have all been criticized. Study Objectives Our primary objective was to show that Emergency Medicine resident-initiated advanced triage […] Continue reading →

From the Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
Legislation has been proposed in Albany that would let Adirondack Health run a part-time, off-campus emergency room in Lake Placid – possibly a compromise between a hospital looking to cut costs and a communi… Continue reading →

From JEMS:
A small explosion at a northeast Iowa factory on Monday injured three workers, including one who was flown to an Iowa City burn unit in critical condition.
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From JEMS:
Financial pressures likely contributed to a helicopter pilot’s decision to continue flying through deteriorating weather before crashing in north Florida, killing a Mayo Clinic heart surgeon and technician on their way to retrieve a he… Continue reading →

From MedPage Today:
Former acting Medicare chief Donald Berwick, MD, has announced that he is running for governor of Massachusetts.
“I feel proud of and grateful to this state, and I want to find the best way to give back,” Berwick said in… Continue reading →

From Modern Physician (hat tip: Dr. Menadue): For the past several years, the agency that oversees the nation’s residency programs—the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education—has been mired in discussions dealing with resident work hours. The ACGME’s Next Accreditation System, its new structure for evaluating physician training programs, is sure to shift talk to another topic. “We […] Continue reading →

From Emergency Medicine Literature of Note: Not a day goes by, it seems, the New York Times or some other equally prominent journalistic source publishes a scathing invective regarding the irresponsible cost of healthcare in the U.S.  In this context, it is equal parts highly entertaining and appalling to measure how ignorant Emergency Physicians are […] Continue reading →

From Health Canal:
Measures taken to ease the pressure on overcrowded hospital emergency departments have been based on flawed data which wrongly blames general practice patients for clogging the system, according to a study by emergency specialists fr… Continue reading →

From the Manawatu Standard:
A “hot bed” system has been permanently established in the Palmerston North Hospital emergency department after a trial to reduce waiting times proved successful.
It aims to improve the flow of critically ill pat… Continue reading →