Every emergency department should have one--an interview room.

Should every adult patient in the hospital have an internist?

Teams under pressure in the emergency department: an interview study.

OBJECTIVE To identify key stressors for emergency department (ED) staff, investigate positive and negative behaviours associated with working under pressure and consider interventions that may improve how the ED team functions. METHODS This was a qualitative study involving semistructured interviews. Data were collected from staff working in the ED of a London teaching hospital. A purposive s...

Defenses to malpractice: what every emergency physician should know.

BACKGROUND Emergency medicine is a high-risk specialty that carries a constant risk of malpractice litigation. Fear of malpractice litigation can lead to less-than-optimal patient care as well as impairments in physician quality of life. Although malpractice fear can be ubiquitous among emergency physicians, most receive little to no education on malpractice. DISCUSSION Medical malpractice re...

Passions in Every Room.

Finding my way through a bramble of monitors tangled in the dense undergrowth of thorny data. Morning rounds are a forest thick with prickly questions. Perfect strangers become patients. Personalities baroque as the 50 year-old Hispanic man admitted yesterday with back pain. In prison for 19 years, (in America for 20) Arms, chest, and thick neck all Hieronymus Bosch and guitar-string calligraph...

Emergency department overcrowding in Massachusetts: making room in our hospitals.

In the past year, stories of Emergency Department (ED) crowding and ambulance diversion have entered Massachusetts headlines with increasing frequency. Hospitals throughout the state now report record numbers of hours on " diversion status, " unable to accept new ambulance arrivals because they are overwhelmed. When emergency responsiveness is threatened, public confidence in the entire health ...