Asthma Treatment Resource from ACEP

The CME / Resource (as an Adobe Acrobat - PDF- document is available from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP):
Managing Acute Exacerbations and Influencing Future Outcomes in the Emergency Department
Patients with poorly controlled asthma are frequently seen in the emergency department (ED) for asthma exacerbations.  These patients are often treated as though they have [...]

Frequent Flier Program for Hospitals?

From Running a Hospital:
Orlando, FL - January 28, 2008 - Paquin Healthcare Companies, Inc. today announced the launch of its new hospital-based customer loyalty program. The program, referred to as My Healthy Rewards, is a way of rewarding hospital’s customers for using their products and services and engaging in wellness activities.
“We are pleased to announce [...]

Hand gel may not curb patient infection rates, study suggests

From EM Today:
The AP (1/30, Ross) reports that many medical professionals “favor…an alcohol-based hand gel, thinking the quick-acting goo will kill bacteria on their hands and curb the spread of infection.” Yet, according to a study appearing in the January issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, “cleaner hands had no bearing on the rate [...]

Placebo Effect and Pain Control

From White Coat Rants:
Lately a lot of patients have shown dramatic improvement in their pain symptoms with the placebo effect in our ED.
An issue some of our nurses have is that they have to get the patient to believe in the effectiveness of the placebo in order for it to work. If you give someone [...]

Medical Errors Often Start Small

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
How does a doctor amputate a healthy limb or operate on the wrong side of the brain? Often, profound medical errors like these occur through a series of small mistakes, reports the Los Angeles Times. And with Medicare refusing to pay for some of the most egregious errors, or [...]

Research suggests physicians may harbor negative attitudes toward overweight, obese people

From EM Today 
On the front page of its Health section, the  Washington Post (1/29, HE1, Rabin) reports that “[o]verweight and obese patients have long complained that doctors treat them insensitively, and are too quick to attribute health problems to their weight,” according to several studies. Previously, these “claims of bias were…met with skepticism,” but recently, [...]

Study suggests cold, cough drugs send 7,000 kids to EDs annually

From EM Today:
The CBS Evening News (1/28, story 8, 1:30, Couric) reported that cough and cold medicines “send about 7,000 children under the age of 12 to the” ED “every year,” according to a study conducted by the CDC and published online in the journal Pediatrics.  
For the study, researchers looked at “data collected by a [...]

Medical Humor: EM Docs

From Q-Fever:
And on it goes. Baylor, who prefers to be called an “emergentologist,” says he’s become accustomed to the challenging dilemmas he encounters every day.
“At first, it was a little daunting,” he says. “The first time I had to decide whether a patient should be admitted or not, I almost cried. It was that stressful.”
“But [...]

Health care professionals making honesty their policy

From the Bangor (ME) Daily News:
A long, long time ago, in an ER far away, I missed a crucial abnormality on an X-ray and the patient died as a result. Others missed it too, he might have died anyway, but there it is; I missed it and he died. In my head I have apologized [...]

CNN: Five Things Not To Do In The ER

From CNN.com
My favorite is #5:
5. Don’t forget the phone
If things get really bad, and no one is helping you, look for a house phone, dial zero, and ask for the hospital administrator on call, Sayah says. “Even the smallest hospitals have a hospital administrator or a patient advocate on call 24/7,” he says. “Hospital administrators [...]