Shifting attention to an undervalued asset; the emergency department technician.

US emergency departments are facing a number of operational challenges related to chronic shortages of registered nurses. Many of the tasks done by registered nurses can be safely and successfully delegated to the emergency department technician (EDT), particularly if a hospital's nursing and administrative leadership are affirmatively engaged in a process to professionalize and train their EDT workforce. This paper examines the state, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regulatory landscape for the EDT, reviews the literature on how hospital's utilize EDT's, discusses approaches to skills training, and examines the need for profession standardization that enables job role expansion.

Virtual Reality as a Clinical Tool for Pain Management.

Purpose Of Review: To evaluate the use of virtual reality (VR) therapies as a clinical tool for the management of acute and chronic pain.

Recent Findings: Recent articles support the hypothesis that VR therapies can effectively distract patients who suffer from chronic pain and from acute pain stimulated in trials. Clinical studies yield promising results in the application of VR therapies to a variety of acute and chronic pain conditions, including fibromyalgia, phantom limb pain, and regional specific pain from past injuries and illnesses.