BACKGROUND AND AIMS The emergency department of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary receives around 68,000 new adult admissions annually. All poisoning cases are admitted to a 14-bedded short-stay ward, except those admitted to intensive care or immediately discharged. This study aimed to analyse epidemiological trends and management of short-stay ward admissions for poisonings. METHOD AND RESULTS Adult...

OBJECTIVE To describe patterns of transfer, resource utilization, and clinical outcomes associated with interhospital transfer of critically ill and injured children. DESIGN Secondary analysis of administrative claims data. PARTICIPANTS Children 0 to 18 years in the Michigan Medicaid program who underwent interhospital transfer for intensive care from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2004. T...

Chest pain is an important presentation in adult patients attending emergency departments (ED). The process of ruling out an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) conventionally requires a short in-patient stay. This places a significant burden on healthcare systems. Recent developments have encouraged us to explore the role of an ED observation ward in the management of these patients. We designed and...

Background and Aim : Emergency ward is among hospital areas with high risk of errors, thus, implementing measures to identify and correct the errors is essential. The object of this study is to identify and assess the errors of the process of admitting patients in Emergency Department of Imam Reza Hospital using Failure Mode Effects Analysis, as one of the tools to assess and manage risk, as we...

As a consequence of the 1989 National Health Service review health authorities are likely to take a greater interest in patterns of use of secondary care services by patients of different general practitioners. Use of accident and emergency departments has been shown to predict subsequent use of other hospital services. If meaningful comparisons are to be made between practices it is important ...

A model of home-based coordinated care deployed recently in the United Kingdom offers promise in reducing hospital admissions in a relatively low-cost manner. The “virtual ward” program provides multidisciplinary case management services to people who have been identified, using a predictive model, as high risks for future emergency hospitalization. Virtual wards use the systems, staffing, and ...

Background The practice of physical restraint in psychiatric emergency practice is rather frequent. Patients with substance abuse more often present aggressive behavior requiring physical restraint in such settings. The legal frame for such practice in our country is defined in the Law for the protection of persons with mental disturbances. Patients admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward were...

Background Infection is one of the most frequent causes of medical admissions to the emergency department in the adult population. However not all infected patients present with fever (>38o Celsius). As early administration of antibiotic is related to improved prognosis, the aim of the study was to compare the “door-to-antibiotics” time in infected patients admitted to the medical emergency war...