The clinical journey of patients with a severe exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): from the ambulance to the emergency department to the hospital ward.

Background: Exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are acute complications that often require emergency management by ambulance, emergency department (ED) and hospital services. Given the high mortality and morbidity of exacerbations, better understanding of the epidemiology of patients with COPD presenting to EDs is needed, as well as identification of predictive factors for adverse outcomes from exacerbations.

Methods: This retrospective observational study involved patients who presented to an ED in the state of Queensland and received either an ED or hospital diagnosis of COPD in 2015 and 2016.

Mastering Linked Datasets: The Future of Emergency Health Care Research.

: The aim of this work is to describe routine integration of prehospital emergency health records into a health master linkage file, delivering ongoing access to integrated patient treatment and outcome information for ambulance-attended patients in Queensland.: The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) data are integrated monthly into the Queensland Health Master Linkage File (MLF) using a linkage algorithm that relies on probabilistic matches in combination with deterministic rules based on patient demographic details, date, time and facility identifiers. Each ambulance record is assigned an enduring linkage key (unique patient identifier) and further processing determines whether each record matches with a corresponding hospital emergency department, admission or death registry record.

Insights into the epidemiology of cardiopulmonary resuscitation-induced consciousness in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Objectives: To describe the characteristics and outcomes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)-induced consciousness patients from a large database of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA).

Methods: Included were adult patients, attended between January 2007 and December 2018 by the Queensland Ambulance Service, where resuscitation was attempted by paramedics. Manual review of records was undertaken to identify CPR-induced consciousness cases.

Pre-hospital and emergency department pathways of care for exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Exacerbations are serious complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that often require acute care from pre-hospital and emergency department (ED) services. Despite being a frequent cause of emergency presentations, gaps remain in both literature and practice for emergency care pathways of COPD exacerbations. This review seeks to address these gaps and focuses on the literature of pre-hospital and ED systems of care and how these intersect with patients experiencing an exacerbation of COPD.