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There is significant variation in emergency physicians ordering of head CT scans for trauma patients, according to a survey of 37 attending EPs conducted during 2009, which quantified their risk tolerance and malpractice fear.1
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An EKG revealed a womans obvious ST-elevation myocardial infarction, but she refused to go to the cardiac catheterization lab before speaking to her husband, who proved difficult to reach by phone.
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When a teenage patient presented to the ED at University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor with unexplained pain in her thigh, the emergency physician (EP) did all the appropriate things to make her comfortable, stabilize the situation, and get her a referral quickly to other specialists, but did not arrive at a definitive diagnosis.
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Tort reform advocates and legislators need to better understand the impact of the common law when drafting language to curtail frivolous litigation or establish damages caps.1 Two recent state Supreme Court cases, one from South Carolina and one from Missouri, dampen the cause of medical malpractice liability reform.
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You are working on a busy summer Friday night when you get a medic call on the radio that you will be receiving three children from the same motor vehicle crash (MVC). There was moderate damage to the vehicle, airbags did deploy, and there were no fatalities at the scene. Five minutes later, you have the following patients, in full spinal precautions, in your ED:
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If a psychiatric patient is being sent home, the EP must determine if there is proper follow-up available for that patient, which means connecting the patient with appropriate resources, says Leslie Zun, MD, MBA, professor and chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and Chicago (IL) Medical School.
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Whether a patient sues after learning an initially normal finding was re-read as abnormal has something to do with how the emergency physician (EP) approaches the situation.
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A young man presented to an emergency department (ED) and reported hallucinations after taking over-the-counter herbal stimulants and diphenhydramine. The ED diagnosis was acute psychosis resolved.
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As part of the workup for a young woman with abdominal pain, the emergency physician (EP) ordered radiographic studies of the patients abdomen, and general surgery and OB/GYN consults. The on-call radiologist first read the studies as unremarkable.
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he courts dont always agree with or follow the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services interpretation that EMTALA ends once an emergency department patient with an emergency condition is admitted to the hospital in good faith for stabilizing treatment.
