ED Nursing Archives – May 1, 2007
May 1, 2007
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700,000 drug reaction cases in EDs each year: Nurses are first to ID them
Shortness of breath. Rashes. Facial swelling. Fatigue. Itching. Hypotension. Dizziness. Confusion. Any one of these symptoms, and dozens of others, could be caused by an adverse drug event (ADE). -
Take these steps for most common ADEs
The three most common drugs involved in ED visits for adverse drug events are insulin, warfarin, and amoxicillin, says a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. -
Obtain better medication histories for each patient
After an elderly man told ED nurses he felt dizzy and weak, he handed them two boxes a cereal box that held medications he took every day, and an oatmeal box containing drugs his doctor told him to stop taking. -
No beds? ED sends patients upstairs
Are there any patients being held in your ED's hallway right now? How would you like for those patients to go directly to an inpatient hallway instead? That's exactly the policy that the ED at Stony Brook (NY) University Medical Center has in place. -
Identify septic patients at triage to improve outcomes
If you suspect a patient is having an acute myocardial infarction (MI), that patient will receive an electrocardiogram and be evaluated with cardiac markers. Yet, there are no definitive diagnostic tests to determine if your patient has sepsis, which has mortality near that of acute MI. -
Early interventions in ED stop rapid deterioration
Identifying septic patients at triage can decrease the potential for development of organ dysfunction leading to severe sepsis and septic shock, says Christa Schorr, RN, BSN, the program manager responsible for data collection and analysis of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign database at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, NJ. -
Pediatric Corner: Young patient has chest pain? Suspect caffeine
If a patient complains of heart palpitation or chest pain, you might not immediately suspect caffeine abuse, but this could be a growing problem among young people, according to a recently published study. Researchers looked retrospectively at 265 caffeine abuse cases called into a regional poison control center over a three-year period, and they found that 12% ended up in an area ED. -
Improve care of children with soccer injuries
Increasing numbers of children are coming to EDs with injuries from soccer, says a just-published study. From 1990 through 2003, there were an estimated 1.6 million soccer-related injuries that resulted in ED visits, ranging from 96,179 in 1990, to 118,963 injuries in 2003.