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Measuring the number of ED malpractice claims that are avoided by calling patients post-discharge is difficult, acknowledges Jeanie Taylor, RN, BSN, MS, vice president of risk services for Emergency Physicians Insurance Company (Epic) in Roseville, CA. "It is hard to measure what did not occur, so the effectiveness of callback programs from a claims perspective is largely anecdotal," she says.
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My mother was on warfarin for a number of years and her degree of anticoagulation was difficult to manage. She had a number of complications, including bleeding episodes. So, I was enthusiastic about these new anticoagulants with their more predictable therapeutic effect. As with all new drugs, there are downsides; currently the lack of a readily available coagulation test to assess if there is a significant coagulopathy and an effective reversal agent. As these drugs are increasingly used, emergency physicians will see patients such as the three cases presented below.
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With surging demand from patients with both medical and mental health needs, and continuing pressure to reduce costs, ED managers have a full plate of concerns to contend with.
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Getting an entire staff of physicians, nurses, and techs to do things differently is never easy, but you can clear away hurdles by giving them the ability to formulate some of their own solutions.
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In early March, a swath of deadly tornadoes plowed across the nation's Midwest and South, once again underscoring the importance of hospital disaster planning.
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Procedural sedation is an important skill for emergency physicians to possess to mitigate the patient's intense physical and emotional reactions to painful and threatening procedures.
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It is recognized that most cases of chronic tinnitus are generated by central brain mechanisms that may be amenable to treatment with cognitive therapies and magnetic stimulation protocols of the temporal and frontal lobes.
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Normal pressure hydrocephalus remains a clinical diagnosis and standardized clinical assessments predict a positive response to shunting in most patients.
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Azithromycin and cardiac risk; warfarin and heart failure; aspirin and VTE; effectiveness of long-acting contraceptives; and FDA actions.