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How would you like to cut your blood chemistry and cardiac screening times from 90 minutes down to 20? Well, thats exactly what the ED at Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexington, KY, did by introducing point-of-care (POC) testing.
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An ED doctor on a SWAT team? Its not as crazy as it sounds. If you visited Augusta, GA, youd see it all the time. For the past several years, the department of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Georgia has had a thriving Tactical Emergency Medicine Support (TEMS) program that includes a formal working relationship with three local SWAT teams.
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Want to cut your diversion hours down to zero? Thats exactly what Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, CA, has done by instituting its emergency saturation triage, or Code EST. When Code EST was implemented in July 2000, diversion hours were about 130 monthly.
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Do you want to dramatically improve ED communication? Try this innovative idea: two-way radios.
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So youve worked long and hard at putting an effective plan in place to respond to emergency incidents, and your feel youre as prepared as you can possibly be. Then, the attorney general comes on the TV and says theres an increased threat of a terrorist attack as we approach the fall presidential campaign, and we all need to be better prepared. You look at the tube in frustration and say, But Ive done everything I can! . . . But have you?
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The liability crisis in many states is an overwhelming threat to our nations emergency care system, says Angela Gardner, MD, an emergency physician and board member of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) in Irving, TX.
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Sometimes, you have to look beyond the walls of your ED for solutions to your overcrowding problems, says Sandy Vecellio, RN, BSN, clinical manager of the ED at Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, GA. And when things really get rough, she advises, send out an SOS.
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Another strategy for improving patient satisfaction in the ED at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock is the calming effect, which aims to create an environment that is less stressful for the patient.
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This is the last of a three-part series addressing the top five issues that lead to malpractice claims in the emergency department and how you can reduce the risk. In the last two issues, we addressed chest pain, headache, and abdominal pain. This month, ED Management looks at head injury and stroke.
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After you have security escort patient Joe Jones out of the ED for causing such a ruckus when he couldnt get any Vicodin, youre thinking youd like to avoid this obvious drug seeker in the future. So maybe you should add his name to the list of frequent flyers or the kook book your staff keep at the nursing station.
