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If a boy is brought to an emergency department after being injured in an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) accident while at a friend's house, do triage nurses wait to get in touch with the parents before treating him?
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Ryan R. Domengeaux, JD, vice president of risk management at Schumacher Group in Lafayette, LA, says, "Policies and procedures are not only driven by statutory requirements, they are also necessary to memorialize service expectations."
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If a lawsuit is filed alleging malpractice in your ED, the only thing worse for your defense than not having a policy covering an important subject might be having one but failing to adhere to it.
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Even if continuous cardiac monitoring is ordered, ED patients may be taken off the monitor for transport or to go to the restroom and kept off the monitor due to oversight, warns Andrew Garlisi, MD, MPH, MBA, VAQSF, medical director for Geauga County EMS in Chardon, OH.
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The ED nurse is the "first line of defense" against a malpractice lawsuit alleging missed or delayed diagnosis of sepsis, according to Paula Mayer, RN, LNC, a partner at Mayer Legal Nurse Consulting in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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Emergency medical services (EMS) crews are all on assignments, it's rush hour, the cardiologist hasn't called back, or the transfer center is waiting for approval before assigning a bed. These are all valid reasons for delays in transfer of a patient with an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), says Kevin Brown, MD, MPH, FACEP, FAAEM, principal with Brown Consulting Services in Armonk, NY, and former director of the department of emergency medicine at Greenwich (CT) Hospital, but if any of these delays occur, times should be documented by the emergency physician (EP).
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Waiting time has always been the number one complaint against hospital emergency departments (EDs). In an attempt to address the waiting issue, hospitals recently began allowing patients with nonemergency conditions to "schedule" their ED visits through the Internet and then wait at home until their "projected treatment time" in the ED.
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If an emergency department (ED) patient with impending sepsis is discharged, returns hours later in septic shock, and dies or develops organ failure, "you're likely to get sued," warns Bruce Wapen, MD, an emergency physician with Mills-Peninsula Emergency Medical Associates in Burlingame, CA.
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Head trauma is a common presenting problem among emergency department (ED) patients. It has been estimated that 1-2 million Americans sustain traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually.
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Hospitals that receive federal funds are required by law to offer language assistance to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).
