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Is your elder patient taking multiple cardiac and blood pressure medications, such as beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors? These medications have important implications for your clinical assessment.
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Four times as much advanced imaging, either CT scans or magnetic resonance imaging, was done in EDs in 2008 compared with 10 years prior, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The more often you are interrupted when giving medication to a patient, the more likely you are to make a mistake, according to a recent study.
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You might assume that if an oncoming ED nurse doesn't ask you any questions, she's got all the information she needs. A better practice is to verbally review the patient's situation while standing together at the bedside, says Laura Aagesen, RN, BSN, MBA, trauma coordinator at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, IL.
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A woman reported a sudden loss of consciousness at home, but she came to the ED alert, oriented, and looking completely fine. Stephanie Topscher, RN, a clinical partner in the ED at Greater Baltimore (MD) Medical Center, performed a thorough neurological assessment and repeated it 30 minutes later.
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Do all of your ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients receive treatment within recommended timeframes every time? If there are delays in primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) or fibrinolysis, these delays can significantly increase the patient's risk of death within 30 days, according to a study of 1,832 patients treated in 2006 and 2007 at 80 Quebec, Canada, hospitals.
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Nasal carriage of methicillin-resistant coagulase negative staphylococci (MR-CoNS) was investigated in 291 adults upon hospital admission. MR-CoNS carriage was present in 19.2% of patients. SCCmec type IV was found in 22% of the Co-NS isolated, and sequencing revealed extensive structural homology between SCCmec IV in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
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There is considerable concern regarding in-stent thrombosis of drug-eluting stents (DES) when aspirin and clopidogrel are stopped for non-cardiac surgery (NCS), but a paucity of data.
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For this study of bacterial contamination of the cell phones of health care workers in a teaching hospital in Saudi Arabia, the investigators swabbed the screen, dialing pad, and sides of the phones and used standard culture techniques.
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The dispatcher-assisted resuscitation trial (DART) tested the hypothesis that 911 dispatcher instructions to provide chest compressions only would be superior to similar instructions that included both chest compressions and rescue breathing. Calls to a 911 system for patients in cardiac arrest were eligible for inclusion in the trial if the dispatcher felt the patient was in cardiac arrest and bystander CPR had not yet been attempted.
