Patients overwhelmingly prefer inpatient boarding to emergency department boarding.

Background: Boarding of admitted patients in the emergency department (ED) is a major cause of crowding. One alternative to boarding in the ED, a full-capacity protocol where boarded patients are redeployed to inpatient units, can reduce crowding and improve overall flow.

Objective: Our aim was to compare patient satisfaction with boarding in the ED vs.

Predictors of sustaining burn injury: does the use of common prevention strategies matter?

The incidence of burn injury has decreased over the past several decades. Although this has been largely attributed to increased prevention awareness, few studies evaluate the effectiveness of implementing standard burn prevention strategies in preventing burn injury. The authors hypothesized that patients who sustain burns use burn prevention strategies less frequently than those who do not.

Physical fitness cannot be used to predict the likelihood of acute coronary syndromes in ED patients with chest pain.

Objective: The objective of the study was to explore the association between physical fitness and the likelihood of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain (CP). We hypothesized that the likelihood of ACS would be lower in physically fit patients and higher in patients with exercise-induced CP.

Methods: The study involved a prospective, descriptive cohort in an academic suburban ED.

Patient history and physician suspicion accurately exclude pregnancy.

Objectives: Reliance upon patient assessment in excluding pregnancy is questionable. Physicians are encouraged to obtain pregnancy tests in all women of childbearing age. We affirmed the accuracy of women and their physicians in predicting pregnancy.

Risk of venous thromboembolism in patients with borderline quantitative D-dimer levels.

Objective: The lower threshold for D-dimer in evaluating patients with low clinical risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) ranges from 200 to 500 ng/mL. We compared the rates of VTE in patients based on D-dimer values. We hypothesized that the rate of VTE in low-risk patients with D-dimer levels less than 500 would be less than 1%.

Pretreatment of patients requiring oral contrast abdominal computed tomography with antiemetics: a randomized controlled trial of efficacy.

Study Objective: Ingestion of diatrizoate meglumine before abdominal computed tomography (CT) is time consuming. We hypothesized that pretreatment with metoclopramide or ondansetron would result in faster ingestion of diatrizoate meglumine than placebo.

Methods: The study was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial on adults requiring oral contrast abdominal CT.

Triage pain scores and the desire for and use of analgesics.

Study Objective: Inadequate analgesia (oligoanalgesia) is a common phenomenon. In an effort to improve pain recognition and management, pain scores are mandated by The Joint Commission. When patients with pain do not receive analgesics, treatment is considered deficient.

Interrater reliability of hemodynamic profiling of patients with heart failure in the ED.

Objective: Hemodynamic profiling (HP) of patients with heart failure (HF) based on clinical assessment of central congestion and peripheral perfusion has been widely used by cardiologists to help guide therapy and determine prognosis but has never been tested or validated in the emergency department (ED). We hypothesized that the interrater reliability of HP in the ED would be good or greater than 0.6.