OBJECTIVES To study the current practice of rapid sequence intubations (RSIs) in four different emergency medicine training programmes in the UK. METHODS Observational study design involving four regional training programmes (Wessex, North West, Yorkshire, Avon). Data were collected in real time using a previously piloted survey tool. Data were collected by specialist registrars in emergency ...

Background—For patients with an acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, cardiac catheterization laboratory (CCL) activation by emergency medical technicians or emergency physicians has been shown to substantially reduce treatment times. One drawback to this approach involves overtriage, whereby CCL staffs are activated for patients who ultimately do not require emergent coronary angio...

C emergencies elicit an immediate, conditioned response. When someone yells “Fire!” for example, most people look for an emergency exit or a fire extinguisher. However, emergency situations in medical offices do not engender the same type of Pavlovian reaction. Although most medical training, including family medicine training, involves learning how to deal with emergency situations, that educa...

In this article, we evaluate the impact of a health literacy intervention to decrease emergency room and doctor's office visits for common childhood illness symptoms. Our education model trained low-income parents of young children (9,240 families) at 55 Head Start sites on the use of a low-literacy health book to respond to common childhood illnesses. The overall strategic framework required e...

PURPOSE Our objective was to assess and categorize harm occurring to patients who called their physicians' office after-hours but did not have their call forwarded to the physician because they stated that their call was not an emergency. METHODS We collected data on 4949 calls handled by our answering service for 1 year in a family medicine residency office in Denver, CO. Of the 2835 after-h...