Man punches, spits at ER doc: police

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

A man who allegedly punched an emergency room doctor — knocking the doctor’s tooth loose and causing him to fall down — was charged with aggravated battery after the incident late Sunday on the South Side, police said.

At 7 p.m. Rushing was in the emergency room at Provident Hospital of Cook County, 500 E. 51st St., for an unidentified injury when he began coughing and allegedly spitting continually into the face of a doctor who was treating him, according to the sergeant.

After the 33-year-old male doctor washed up, he requested that Rushing put on a face mask for the safety of others.

“At this time the man began outraged and began striking the doctor about the face, and he fell to the ground,’’ the sergeant said. The blows knocked the doctor’s tooth loose and caused him to suffer multiple scratches and abrasions to his face, the sergeant said.

Doctor accused of going into ER drunk, harassing nurses

From the (Winsor, ONT) Gazette:

An emergency room doctor is banned from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., while officials investigate a claim that he went into the ER intoxicated and made sexual advances toward nurses.

Murder by Sux

From Medgadget:

According to Dubai authorities, and as reported by ABC News, Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was given a shot of succinylcholine prior to other grossly things done to his body on the fateful (for him) day of January 19, 2010. And since your humble correspondent is an anesthesiologist by day, and by call at night, let me tell you why succinylcholine is such a perfect murder weapon.

Hospital Offers ER Wait Times by Text, Online, Phone

From PRWire:

Edward Hospital is among the first hospitals in the country to make Emergency Room wait times available via text message, online and by phone.

People can text, click, or call to find out how quickly they’ll begin treatment in Edward’s ER in Naperville, 801 S. Washington St. and the Edward Plainfield ER 24/7, 127th St. and Van Dyke Rd.:

Text: “ERwait” to 41411

Click: http://www.edward.org (the blue ER wait time banner is displayed in the upper right corner of the home page)

Call: (630) 527-5969

“Text messaging is the most practical way to find out how long the ER wait happens to be. You never know where you’ll be when an emergency strikes, but chances are you’ll have access to a cell phone,” says Tom Scaletta, MD, medical director, Edward Hospital emergency department. “Every hour of every day is different. We’re providing wait times so you know what to expect.”

Edward’s ER wait times are calculated by averaging the time from when a patient arrives and checks in to the time they are placed in a room where treatment begins, commonly referred to as the “door to treatment area” time. The wait times are updated every 15 minutes.

Wash your hands or… you’re fired

From Fierce Healthcare:

Employees with patient care responsibilities at Abingdon (Pa.) Memorial Hospital could soon find themselves out of a job if they don’t follow hospital policy on hand-washing. This twist is the hospital’s latest salvo in a two-year campaign to address poor hand-washing among employees who are involved in patient care.

The hospital’s policy states that these employees must wash their hands before and after entering each patient’s room. Two years ago Abingdon Memorial tasked an infection-control nurse in epidemiology with forming a team of spies to determine how often doctors and nurses complied with the policy.

Pennsylvania Paramedic Attacked by Patient Dies

From JEMS:

A Bensalem, Pennsylvania Paramedic has died after being attacked by a reportedly suicidal male, according to WPVI news.

At about 7 p.m. Sunday evening, EMS and police units were dispatched to a male with a a reported mental illness (initially reported by WPVI as a possible suicidal subject), and at some point during interaction with the victim the paramedic was attacked. The medic, not yet identified, was pronounced dead at an area hospital.

The Trentonian reported late Sunday that the medic was stabbed.

I’m a cop. Give me narcotics.

From the Long Island Press:

A Riverhead man was arrested for criminal impersonation after police say he pretended to be a Nassau County Police Officer on more than one occasion.

Calabrese went to the South Nassau Communities Hospital’s emergency room in Oceanside on Feb. 23 for treatment of an injury that he said he received after wrestling with an arrestee while he was working as a Nassau County Police Department undercover detective. According to police, his intention was to receive a prescription for painkillers.

On March 4 Calabrese was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal impersonation. Detectives say that they have reason to believe that Calabrese made similar emergency room visits in hospitals in Nassau, Queens and Suffolk.