Can Emergency Medical Services Utilization Rates Be Used to Measure the Success of An Alcohol Amnesty Policy?

Medical Amnesty/Good Samaritan (MAGS) policies, which eliminate legal charges when students call 9-1-1 for excessive drinking, have been implemented with the goal of reducing barriers to accessing Emergency Medical Services (EMS). This study investigated the impact of MAGS policy implementation on EMS calls on campus and if that EMS call volume could be used to measure policy success. The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence of alcohol-related EMS calls before and after MAGS implementation at a single large public university campus.

Medication Palatability Affects Physician Prescribing Preferences for Common Pediatric Conditions.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine if physicians would alter their prescribing preferences after sampling liquid formulations of medications for common pediatric diagnoses.

Methods: This was a prospective interventional before/after study conducted at an academic medical center in the United States. The participants of interest included emergency, family medicine, and pediatric physicians.

A Guide to Pain Assessment and Management in the Neonate.

Newborn infants experience acute pain with various medical procedures. Evidence demonstrates that controlling pain in the newborn period is beneficial, improving physiologic, behavioral, and hormonal outcomes. Multiple validated scoring systems exist to assess pain in a neonate; however, there is no standardized or universal approach for pain management.

Cost of an acting intern: clinical productivity in the academic emergency department.

Background: A few studies suggest that an increasing clinical workload does not adversely affect quality of teaching in the Emergency Department (ED); however, the impact of clinical teaching on productivity is unknown.

Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to determine whether there was a difference in relative value units (RVUs) billed by faculty members when an acting internship (AI) student is on shift. Secondary objectives include comparing RVUs billed by individual faculty members and in different locations.

Does the experience of the writer affect the evaluative components on the standardized letter of recommendation in emergency medicine?

Background: The Standardized Letter of Recommendation (SLOR) was developed in an attempt to standardize the evaluation of applicants to an emergency medicine (EM) residency.

Objective: Our aim was to determine whether the Global Assessment Score (GAS) and Likelihood of Matching Assessment (LOMA) of the SLOR for applicants applying to an EM residency are affected by the experience of the letter writer. We describe the distribution of GAS and LOMA grades and compare the GAS and LOMA scores to length of time an applicant knew the letter writer and number of EM rotations.