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This is a personal account of military medicine in the recent conflict. It reflects a view from a relative newcomer to Navy medicineme. I learned many important lessons about providing medical care to the participants and bystanders of war, about the character of those involved in all areas of the conflict, and about myself.
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A once-a-day dose of a valacyclovir reduces the rate of transmission of genital herpes (HSV-2) from an infected partner to an uninfected susceptible partner, according to a new study.
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At Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center, for example, several years of ongoing meetings with community physicians created awareness of how the facilitys ED handled transfers. It also engendered valuable interpersonal relationships among medical professionals, while the facility improved communications through centralized phone and computer transfer capabilities.
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Denver Health Medical Center is being sued by a patient who claims that two hospital workers took a photograph of his genitals while he lay unconscious in their ED last February. Could a hospital be held liable for such accusations?
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In 1997, the ED at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, IN, was in the 45th percentile in South Bend, IN-based Press Ganey Associates satisfaction rankings. That same year, Southern Ohio Medical Center in Portsmouth, languished in the ninth percentile.
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The ED at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, MN, has been able to increase the percentage of criteria blood draws from 31% to 41% one of the keys to slashing lab specimen turnaround time. But since only a specific percentage of patients meet the criteria at any given time, how is that possible?
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Drug-seeking behaviors are commonplace in emergency departments. Many physicians have faced patients with multiple alleged allergies to narcotics who are asking for a medication that the physician never would have initially thought of prescribing, whose medications were stolen, and who become angry, threatening, and agitated upon refusal to refill the stolen prescription. This article defines various terms used in the drug-seeking literature, provides an overview of drug-seeking behaviors, and proposes some techniques to manage these patients both at the individual and at the institutional levels.
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Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy range from chronic pre-existing disease to life-threatening conditions such as HELLP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelets) and eclampsia. They often represent a continuum from bad to worse. The emergency department physician is likely to evaluate a pregnant patient for many conditions unrelated to the pregnancy itself, and knowledge of abnormalities that warrant further assessment and follow-up is essential.
