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Aggressive fluid resuscitation, which normally would be used in younger trauma patients, potentially could do serious harm to an elder patient, warns Rhyan Weaver, RN, BSN, CEN, clinical supervisor in the ED at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ.
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After a night out with friends, a young man was found on the living room floor in the morning. His family assumed he was intoxicated, but after a period of time 911 was called.
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Is your patient presenting with vague complaints of abdominal pain, flank pain or a history of renal stones, recurrent dislocations, or intentional trauma? Consider the possibility of pain medication abuse. (See story, below, on new CDC report on ED visits for non-medical use of pain medications.)
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While the EKG is done immediately upon a chest pain patient's arrival at Huntsville (AL) Hospital, it still must be reviewed by the ED physician within five minutes.
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Nurses in the Scottish Rite ED at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta were frustrated because they were constantly dealing with multiple sets of orders on multiple patients.
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This web-based survey assessed 1976 critical care practitioners' perceptions of the risks for unplanned extubation. Members of the American Association for Respiratory Care, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine reported a number of factors associated with unplanned extubation, including outward migration of the endotracheal tube (ETT; reported by 73% of respondents), the patient tugging on the ETT (87%), removing a nasogastric tube (71%), absence of physical restraints (72%), a nurse/patient ratio of 1:3 (60%), trips out of the ICU for tests (59%), and light sedation (42%).
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What should ED managers be doing while they wait for The Joint Commission to publish a new standard for medication reconciliation? Take a team approach, recommends Diana S. Contino, RN, MBA, FAEN, senior manager of health care with Deloitte Consulting in Los Angeles.
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As The Grateful Dead might say if asked to describe the various iterations of the National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) for medication reconciliation, "what a long, strange trip it's been."