Frequent users of the emergency department (ED) who contribute to ED overcrowding are a well-known public health issue. An integrative and multidisciplinary approach through case management (CM) is the intervention of choice to reduce the number of ED visits. This strategy seems to work particularly well among patients with psychiatric comorbidities and could also be implemented in the prehospital setting in collaboration with emergency medical services and primary care physicians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Prompt recognition of sepsis is critical to improving patients’ outcomes. We compared the performance of NEWS and qSOFA scores as sepsis detection tools in patients admitted to the emergency department (ED) with suspicion of sepsis. Methodology: A single-center 12-month retrospective study comparing NEWS using the recommended cut-off of ≥5 and qSOFA as sepsis screening tools in a cohort of patients transported by emergency medical services (EMS) to the Lausanne University Hospital (LUH).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Basic life support (BLS) is the first link in the chain of survival and should be performed by every lay rescuer. Although international studies have suggested that BLS knowledge was poor among the overall population, Swiss data are scarce. Our objective in this study was to evaluate BLS knowledge among Swiss conscripts, a semi-representative sample of Swiss young adults, during the recruitment process and to identify potential characteristics related to performance.
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