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Abdominal pain is an exceedingly common presentation in the emergency department. Every clinician fears missing the diagnosis of appendicitis. Children are particularly challenging since appendicitis is less common, and the history and physical may be subtle. The diagnostic use of CT is not without its risks and must be balanced against the potential risk of appendicitis in each individual patient. This article provides a comprehensive review of appendicitis in children.
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If your ED patient is sedated, he or she may have an adverse reaction to medications used in the procedure, an allergic reaction, or become hypoxic from inadequate respiratory effort, warns Brad Guffin, BSN, RN-BC, CPEN, director of emergency services at Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, FL.
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While observing an elderly woman rubbing her arm as though it was a muscle ache, which she said was from gardening work, the possibility of a heart attack didn't cross the mind of the ED nurse caring for the patient.
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If your ED patient is taking multiple medications, he or she may have no idea what they are for. "They may tell us they are taking them because they were prescribed, without knowing what the purpose is or if the dosage changed recently," says Jocelyn Cajanap, RN, ED educator at Glendale (CA) Adventist Medical Center.
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When an ED physician at Scripps Mercy San Diego (CA) decided to order lorazepam to help an elderly man sleep, the ED nurse caring for the patient got a very unexpected reaction.
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If your patient has aspirated prior to being intubated, he or she is at increased risk for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), warns Nicole Schiever, RN, MSN, ED team leader at Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, IL.
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Your next stroke patient may be aware there is a drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), but he or she probably won't realize how few stroke patients are actually candidates for this treatment.
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Not every patient experiencing shortness of breath needs to have definitive airway intervention such as intubation, says Sybil Murray, RN, an ED nurse at St. Anthony's Medical Center in St. Louis, MO.
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When it's typical for patients to wait four hours or more to see an emergency physician, and your leave-without-being-seen (LWBS) rate is pushing 10%, you know it's time to rethink the whole process.
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With our economy in shambles, and July unemployment at 9.2% nationally just short of the all-time high of 10.81% and way off the mark of the all-time low of 3.31% fewer and fewer ED patients are insured, and it's a significant challenge to manage the resulting uptick in ED visits.
