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Editor's Note: This is a two-part series on medication safety for inpatients being held in the ED. This month, we give strategies to reduce errors with inpatient medications. Last month, we gave strategies to avoid missed dosages.
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Before ED nurses at Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia, MN, administered tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to a man in his 80s with obvious stroke symptoms, the neurologist was consulted and also the patient's family members, says Kathie Pulchinski, RN, ED nurse manager.
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Do you treat elderly patients waiting in the ED as you would expect your own family member to be treated as if they were the only ones there?
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Developing personal relationships with ED patients involves ethical, as well as possible legal implications, says William Sullivan, DO, JD, FACEP, director of emergency services at St. Margaret's Hospital in Spring Valley, IL, and a Frankfort, IL-based practicing attorney. "Some ethicists have questioned whether it is wise to merge one's social and professional lives," he adds.
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If an emergency physician (EP) continues to treat a patient after a social relationship has developed, he or she faces significant legal risks, according to Jennifer Lawter, RN, JD, vice president of risk management at EPMG in Ann Arbor, MI.
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After the emergency physician's (EP) preliminary reading of a seizure patient's X-ray was negative, the patient was discharged, but the following day, the radiologist's report showed compression of the spine.
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If you have a conflict with a colleague, do you document only facts and objective observations or accusatory statements such as, "Despite my intervention, the doctor refused to acknowledge what I am telling him?"
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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the controversial 6th Circuit decision in the case of Moses v. Providence Hospital, where the federal appeals court rejected Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule that EMTALA ends once a hospital admits a patient in good faith for further stabilizing care.
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As reform helps more Americans gain access to health coverage, experts predict that the nation's EDs will be bulging at the seams.
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While emergency department (ED) volume is always going to be somewhat unpredictable, ED operations at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, LA, used to hum along so optimally that there was no reason to rethink the way things were done.
