BACKGROUND Drug use-related visits to the emergency department (ED) can undermine discharge planning and lead to recurrent use of acute services. Yet, little is known about where patients go post discharge. We explored trends in discharge dispositions of drug-involved ED visits, with a focus on gender differences. METHODS We extracted data from the 2004-2011 Drug Abuse Warning Network, a nati...

OBJECTIVE The current study describes the short-term outcome of 61 inpatients with anorexia nervosa (AN), utilizing a standardized protocol that could be completed by most patients within the typical length of stay (LOS) in an academic medical center in our geographic area. METHOD Patients were placed on disorder-specific and medication clinical pathways and completed questionnaires at admiss...

There is a paucity of published literature on the length of hospital stays (LOS) for patients who leave against medical advice (AMA) and on the factors that predict their LOS. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between race and the LOS for AMA patients after adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics. National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) data were used to descr...

This study aimed to understand the reasons for late presentation of cases of severe neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia. We administered a questionnaire to parents of 130 infants with severe jaundice admitted to Cairo University Children's Hospital neonatal intensive care unit at age > or = 6 days over an 18-month period. Although 125 infants (96.2%) were delivered in a health care facility, no discha...

BACKGROUND Diagnostic error is a significant problem in emergency medicine, where initial clinical assessment and decision making is often based on incomplete clinical information. Traditional computerised diagnostic systems have been of limited use in the acute setting, mainly due to the need for lengthy system consultation. We evaluated a novel web-based reminder system, which provides rapid ...

This study investigated factors leading to premature discharge from the residential substance abuse treatment programme at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI). Two hundred and twenty-four patients, mean age 36 +/- 9.75 and age range of 16-66 years were studied The patients, 87.5% men, were admitted to the programme over the period July 1999 to June 2002. Sources of data, including...