When an ED patient is being held while waiting for an inpatient bed, Rolf Lowe, JD, an attorney with Rogers Mantese & Associates in Royal Oak, MI, says "there is no bright line cut off for liability. Substandard care in the ED that has an effect on the patient's outcome can result in liability for the EP and the ED staff."
In this issue: Drug shortages; metformin and cancer prevention; migraine prevention guidelines; and FDA actions.
This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a formal audit and feedback program targeted at broad-spectrum antibiotic use in critically ill patients.
Investigators at the University of Iowa hospital collected culture samples from vinyl privacy curtains at 30 inpatient locations, half of them in the medical and surgical ICUs. Curtains at each location were sampled twice weekly.
Investigators representing three professional societies carried out a point-prevalence assessment of the use of systemic antifungal therapy (SAT) in patients in ICUs in France and Belgium on December 8, 2008.
Great strides have been made over the last couple of decades in the management of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and widespread implementation of such interventions as aspirin, beta-blockers, and prompt reperfusion therapy has contributed to substantially reduced mortality from this leading killer.
A patient handover, or handoff, in health care can be defined as the transfer of information, professional responsibility, and accountability between individuals and teams. Handoffs represent a time of particular patient vulnerability to complications and medical errors, and with the current focus on safety an increasing amount of attention has been devoted to characterizing and improving them.
Rice and colleagues report a secondary analysis of outcomes among trauma patients in relation to the degree to which the clinicians managing them adhered to a specified set of evidence-based guidelines.
This study examined outcomes for 3494 adult patients who experienced clinical deterioration that triggered a medical emergency team (MET) activation over a 2-year period.
