A 7 Year Summary of Emergency Department Visits by Patients With Mental Health Disorders.

Objectives: Emergency departments (EDs) have been increasingly utilized over time for psychiatric care. While multiple studies have assessed these trends in nationally representative data, few have evaluated these trends in state-level data. This investigation seeks to understand the mental health-related ED burden in North Carolina (NC) by describing trends in ED visits associated with a mental health diagnosis (MHD) over time.

Begin risk assessment for falls in women at 45, not 65.

The clinical and epidemiological literature provides guidelines for fall prevention starting at age 65; however, the focus on age ≥65 is not evidence based. Therefore, this study examined state-wide North Carolina emergency department visit data to examine the characteristics of falls across the age spectrum, identify the age at which the incidence of fall-related emergency department visits started to increase and determine whether these trends were similar for men and women. We determined that incidence rates of fall-related emergency department visits began to increase in early middle age, particularly for women.

Emergency Department Visits by Older Adults with Mental Illness in North Carolina.

Introduction: We analyzed emergency department (ED) visits by patients with mental health disorders (MHDs) in North Carolina from 2008-2010 to determine frequencies and characteristics of ED visits by older adults with MHDs.

Methods: We extracted ED visit data from the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT). We defined mental health visits as visits with a mental health ICD-9-CM diagnostic code, and organized MHDs into clinically similar groups for analysis.

Mid-level providers and emergency care: let's not lose the force.

The progressive rise of ED visits globally, and insufficient numbers of emergency physicians, has resulted in the use of mid-level providers as adjuncts for the provision of emergency care, especially in the US and Canada. Military medics, midwives, aeromedical paramedics, EMT-Ps, flight nurses, forensic nurses, sexual assault nurse examiner nurses--are some examples of well-established mid-level provider professionals who achieve their clinical credentials through accredited training programmes and formal certification. In emergency medicine, however, mid-level providers are trained for general care, and typically acquire emergency medicine skills through on-the-job experience.

Toward a new paradigm: goal-based residency training.

Objectives: Many factors affect the clinical training experience of emergency medicine (EM) residents, and length of training currently serves as a proxy for clinical experience. Very few studies have been published that provide quantitative information about clinical experience. The goals of this study were to determine the numbers of clinical encounters for each resident in emergency department (ED) rotations during training in a 3-year program, to characterize these encounters by patient acuity and age, to determine the numbers of encounters for selected clinical disorders, and to assess the variation in clinical experience between residents.

North Carolina Emergency Department data: January 1, 2007-December 31, 2007.

Background: The purpose of this paper is to describe patient characteristics and clinical conditions seen in North Carolina emergency departments (EDs) in 2007.

Methods: Data were analyzed from a static database of all 2007 ED visits in the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT). Data were captured from 80% of North Carolina EDs on January 1, 2007 and 93% as of December 31, 2007.

Epidemiology of burn injuries presenting to North Carolina emergency departments in 2006-2007.

Unlabelled: Approximately 600,000 burns present to Emergency Departments each year in the United States, yet there is little systematic or evidence-based training of Emergency Physicians in acute burn management. We retrospectively accessed the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT) database to identify all thermal burns and electrical injuries with associated thermal burns presenting to 92% of North Carolina Emergency Departments over a 1-year period.

Results: 10,501 patients met inclusion criteria, 0.

ED chief complaint categories for a medical student curriculum.

Background: It is important to stimulate the interest of all medical students in emergency medicine to further its growth nationally and internationally. Students focused on other specialties can benefit from exposure to the more common, less acute problems seen in the emergency department (ED).

Aims: We developed a categorization system for chief complaints (CC) in an academic ED fast track (FT) area, so that a curriculum based upon actual CC and clinical experience could be designed for learners.

North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS): comparison of emergency department data.

The North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT) is a near-real-time database of emergency department (ED) visits automatically extracted from hospital information system(s) in the state of North Carolina. The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) is a retrospective probability sample survey of visits to U.S.

Toward vocabulary control for chief complaint.

The chief complaint (CC) is the data element that documents the patient's reason for visiting the emergency department (ED). The need for a CC vocabulary has been acknowledged at national meetings and in multiple publications, but to our knowledge no groups have specifically focused on the requirements and development plans for a CC vocabulary. The national consensus meeting "Towards Vocabulary Control for Chief Complaint" was convened to identify the potential uses for ED CC and to develop the framework for CC vocabulary control.

The globalization of emergency medicine and its importance for public health.

Emergency medicine (EM) is a global discipline that provides secondary disease prevention and is also a tool for primary prevention. It is a horizontally integrated system of emergency care consisting of access to EM care; provision of EM care in the community and during transportation of patients; and provision of care at the receiving facility or hospital emergency department. EM can offer many tools to improve public health.

Injuries from the 2002 North Carolina ice storm, and strategies for prevention.

Context: In 2002, an ice storm interrupted power to 1.3 million households in North Carolina, USA. Previous reports described storm injuries in regions with frequent winter weather.

Diagnosis clusters for emergency medicine.

Objectives: Aggregated emergency department (ED) data are useful for research, ED operations, and public health surveillance. Diagnosis data are widely available as The International Classification of Diseases, version, 9, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes; however, there are over 24,000 ICD-9-CM code-descriptor pairs. Standardized groupings (clusters) of ICD-9-CM codes have been developed by other disciplines, including family medicine (FM), internal medicine (IM), inpatient care (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ]), and vital statistics (NCHS).

Five-level triage system more effective than three-level in tertiary emergency department.

Introduction: The study objectives were to compare reliability and validity of a 3-level (3L) triage system with a new 5-level (5L) triage system and determine the effect of nursing experience on triage reliability.

Methods: The study was conducted in a southeastern tertiary emergency department. With a stratified random sample, reliability of 3L triage ratings was measured with weighted kappa (time 1).