Triage Questions for Chest Pain & Chest-Related Symptoms
August 21, 2017
When a patient presents with chest pain or chest-related symptoms, the role of the triage nurse is to critically evaluate the relationship of risk factors to outcome potentials to make the best triage decisions. The more risk factors a patient has, the greater the triage nurse’s concern for a potential high-risk scenario. In this blog,…Read More
Vital Signs: Leveraging the EMR to Heighten Awareness
August 16, 2017
In emergency medicine and presumably in urgent and primary care, one of the common failure-to-diagnose drivers is the failure to recognize or act upon abnormal vital signs. In one analysis of 90,000 patients that we published in Annals of Emergency Medicine, 16% of patients presented to the emergency department with an abnormal vital sign, and…Read More
Stroke Mimics
August 14, 2017
Acute ischemic stroke affects about 800,000 patients a year in the U.S.; 600,000 of these cases are a first stroke. Stroke is a leading cause of permanent cognitive and function-limiting disability, and it ranks fifth among all causes of death. Prompt recognition of an acute ischemic stroke is crucial, as studies show that the volume…Read More
Encouraging the Maternal-Fetal Triage Index OB Triage Tool
August 7, 2017
The Maternal Fetal Triage Index (MFTI) tool developed by obstetric experts at AWHONN is a recent advance that deserves attention from all obstetric professionals. If you haven’t yet learned of it, stay tuned, because you will be hearing much about it as it goes “live” in the EMR of many institutions around the country. Source:…Read More
Embedding Evidence-Based Medicine into EMR Physician Documentation
August 3, 2017
Practitioners should employ Evidence-Based Medicine or Best Evidence whenever possible. No one would argue with that. If a patient presenting with chest pain has a very low probability of a pulmonary embolism based on good evidence, it would be inappropriate to order a CT scan and expose a patient to the dangers of unnecessary radiation….Read More
4 Clinical Tips for Triage Nurses
July 31, 2017
Accurate triage of patients in an emergency department is critical to timely care and patient safety. Source: Hubspot
Clinical Decision Support in the “Mental Workflow”
July 28, 2017
In order to provide the highest quality and safest care, medical practitioners should have immediate access to clinical decision support. Medicine should not be a memory game; in fact, according to an analysis by Allan Kachalia, MD, JD, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, relying solely on memory could leave you more susceptible to…Read More
Shoulder Dystocia Risk Factors
July 24, 2017
You have been following this 22-year-old primigravida patient since she transferred into your practice at 18 weeks gestation. She tells you that she started her pregnancy weighing 195 pounds; it is now two weeks before her due date and she weighs 248 pounds. She failed her 28-week glucose screen; after the 3-hour oral glucose tolerance test, she…Read More
Optimizing e-Learning for Healthcare Professionals
July 17, 2017
Every healthcare professional is familiar with the traditional learning methods of classroom lectures, texts, conferences and hands-on clinical training. For “experienced” older clinicians (like me) educated during the pre-internet era, these were the exclusive methods employed during college, medical/nursing school, internship, residency and beyond. You went to lectures, hit the books, and relied on the…Read More
Does Guided EMR Documentation Impact Clinical Practice, Documentation Compliance and Outcomes?
July 14, 2017
In a previous article entitled “Should Your EHR Documentation Templates Include Chief Complaint Specific Content,” we emphasized the importance of providing chief compliant-specific content in physician documentation templates for medical specialties that are susceptible to diagnosis-related errors. Let’s advance that concept a step further and explore what other features could be built into an EMR…Read More
