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Not infrequently, parents are reluctant to proceed with medical treatment for their children in the emergency department (ED). When the treatment is clearly indicated, and when parental reluctance progresses to outright refusal, ED physicians are faced with difficult choices.
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How can a misread on an EKG years prior, which led to no immediate negative outcome, be held up at a distant time in the future as malpractice? It doesn't seem right to the practicing ED physician.
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Caring for patients with little privacy other than thin curtains in a crowded emergency department seems to fly in the face of the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). But what are the actual liability risks of this practice?
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Prompt, accurate assessment of the severity of injury and early initiation of appropriate critical care — including adequate oxygenation, ventilation and correction of hypotension — is of crucial importance in preventing deaths in children with severe trauma. This article reviews the critical aspects of airway assessment and management in the pediatric trauma patient.
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Prompt, accurate assessment of the severity of injury and early initiation of appropriate critical care — including adequate oxygenation, ventilation and correction of hypotension — is of crucial importance in preventing deaths in children with severe trauma. This article reviews the critical aspects of airway assessment and management in the pediatric trauma patient.
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How many of your patients have a CT scan during their ED evaluation? Many hospitals report rates of 20% or more. A significant number of these scans are of the abdomen and pelvis. It is important for the emergency physician to have the knowledge to view and interpret these images.
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The first part of this series discussed abdominal pain in pediatric patients. This second and final part will cover abdominal pain in elderly, immunocompromised, and pregnant patients. Those 65 years of age and older constitute the fastest-growing segment of the population, and currently comprise about 12% of the U.S. population. This means that abdominal pain in the elderly will be a commonplace occurrence in EDs.
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The evaluation of a febrile child is an extremely common scenario in most emergency departments. Emergency physicians must decide which children require a work-up, the nature of that work-up, and the need for antibiotics with or without hospitalization. This process often is in the context of evaluating many febrile children, with only subtle clues as to which child truly may be ill. Unfortunately, it is common for inadvertent errors in judgment to end up in the courtroom as a subject of malpractice lawsuits. This months issue focuses on some of the risks and controversies in the evaluation of the febrile child.
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As of Jan. 1, hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations must meet a new standard that has a higher requirement for care given to admitted patients in the ED, and CEOs will depend on ED managers to lead the effort in complying with this standard.
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The newly announced national patient safety goals, which are expected to receive special emphasis at accreditation surveys, require EDs and other departments of the hospital to accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care.