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The New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA) has published the first installment of Planning today for a pandemic tomorrow, a guide that hospitals can use to develop or assess a pandemic flu response plan. The guide includes the following topics:
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In 1999, "ER One," a high-tech ED designed for optimal response to mass casualty events, was just a gleam in the eye of Mark Smith, MD, FACEP, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Washington (DC) Hospital Center.
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A new process for handlings calls from primary care physicians not only has improved ED communications at Doctors Hospital in Columbus, OH, but it also has boosted relations with family physicians in the community thanks in no small part to a 30-minute guarantee offered for those doctors' patients.
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The ED at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Ranson, WV, has reduced its rate of patients who leave without being seen (LWBS) by 50% with the addition of a mobile unit located immediately outside the main department.
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Most of the attention on catheter-related bloodstream infections (CR-BSI) in the ICU focuses on central venous catheters (CVC), a bias that likely derives, in part, from the 2002 Centers for Disease Control guidelines which stipulate that arterial catheters (AC) have "low infection ratesrarely associated with bloodstream infections.
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A prospective observational study was conducted to assess diagnostic and therapeutic efficacies of a daily routine CXR and to evaluate the impact of discontinuing this practice. The setting was a 10-bed mixed medical-surgical ICU of a non-academic teaching hospital in The Netherlands.
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n this issue: Stop smoking drug Chantix rates stronger warning from FDA; Type 2 diabetes surgery on the way?; Vytorin study inconclusive; Influenza A virus found resistant to Tamiflu; FDA actions.
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Most critically ill patients require mechanical ventilation, and, according to one large survey, the weaning process occupies about 40% of the time that patients spend connected to the ventilator.
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Exposures to toxic alcohols such as methanol, ethylene glycol, and isopropanol have been reported in the medical literature for decades. These agents are found in a variety of household products, leading to accidental ingestion in the pediatric population and intentional ingestion in the adult population as a suicidal agent or as an inexpensive substitute for ethanol.