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Does the EP's charting indicate that a patient was discharged home, while an ED nurse's documentation states, "The patient looks very sick and I don't think he should be discharged," go unacknowledged without any additional explanation?
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Musculoskeletal injuries account for approximately 10-15% of all childhood injuries, with most occurring as a result of a fall, sports-related injury, motor vehicle trauma, or intentional physical abuse.
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Nearly 8% of 355,088 children received a CT scan in a 3-year period, with 3.5% of the children receiving more than one, according to a recent study.
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Is your patient telling you, "It's probably something I ate," "It's nothing," "There isn't any heart history in my family," or "I'm way too young to have a heart problem?"
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Would you think to tell a receiving nurse that your ED patient has a dog at home she's worried about? That may be the reason she's refusing admission, says Pat Clutter, RN, MEd, CEN, FAEN, an ED nurse at St. John's Lebanon (MO) Hospital.
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At St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, NH, ED nurses do at least 90% of bedside dysphagia screens while the patient is still in the ED, says Susan L. Barnard, MS, APRN, CCRN, trauma coordinator.
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You, and other ED nurses, may have been taking care of a patient for hours without realizing he or she has an infection that requires isolation. The fast-paced ED environment is an added challenge in preventing ED-acquired infections, according to Susan Gray, RN, BSN, CEN, an ED nurse at Greater Baltimore (MD) Medical Center. "Staff are in and out of rooms often," she adds.
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If you fail to confirm that neurological deficits are a normal baseline for your elder patient, this may be a dangerous assumption. To avoid this mistake, ask others about the patient's baseline, advises Nadya Valdovinos, RN, TNCC, an ED nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and read past medical notes and transfer records.
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Weather forecasters had much of the Southeast on high alert for dangerous storms on Wednesday, April 27, but the clinical and administrative staff at Cullman Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in Cullman, AL, got a particularly vivid view of what these storms were capable of at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
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In 2008, there was plenty of evidence that things weren't working very well in the ED at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT. The leave-without-being-seen (LWBS) rate was at 5%, the average wait time to see a physician was over two hours, patient satisfaction was in the single digits, and the hospital recorded eight serious safety events in that one year alone.
