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A man with a mild stomachache, a woman reporting neck pain days after a motor vehicle accident, and a teenager with an ankle injury. Would these patients be triaged as low acuity and sent to your EDs waiting room?
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Could mistakes made in your ED cause an injured elderly patient to go into fluid overload or become hypothermic? Common errors in nursing practice can be life-threatening for these patients, says Karen Hayes, PhD, ARNP, assistant professor at the School of Nursing at Wichita (KS) State University.
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When a physician asks for additional suture material for wound repair and the nurse realizes there is none left, the doctor explodes in anger.
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Failing to document the medications a patient currently is taking. Nurses mixing IV piggybacks. Storing drugs in concentrated form.
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ED managers and staff will face even greater responsibility for compliance under the 2006 National Patient Safety Goals just unveiled by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
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A patient came into the ED with acute onset of headache. A computed axial tomography (CAT) scan of the brain was performed, and a wet reading (an initial review of the study without definitive interpretation) in radiology reported intracranial hematoma. The patient went to the OR for emergency neurosurgery.
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In the world of bioterrorism drills, this was something special: TOPOFF3, a program mandated by Congress and sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, simulated terror attacks in several locations in the United States including the entire state of New Jersey.
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An ED manager as the driving force behind a capital campaign for a new facility? It has proved to be a winning formula at Carondelet Health Networks St. Marys Hospital in Tucson, AZ, where a successful $11 million-plus campaign has led to the opening of a new state-of-the-art ED.
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If you had reduced the mean door-to-doctor time in your ED from 64.3 minutes to 39.8 minutes (a 38.1% improvement) in seven months, youd probably be pretty happy. But for Maureen Kelly-Nichols, RN, MSA, the ED nurse director at Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI, that was not the key measure of success in her recent Six Sigma project.
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