The effect of clinical experience on the error rate of emergency physicians.

Study Objective: We assess the effect of emergency physicians' clinical experience on the propensity to commit a patient care error.

Methods: Seven years of data from a single emergency department's peer review activities were reviewed for all patient care errors made by emergency physicians. Emergency physician clinical experience was defined as years since completion of residency training during the year each error was made.

Date of first positive HIV test: reliability of information collected for HIV/AIDS surveillance in the United States.

Objectives: This study examined the reliability of the first positive HIV test date reported in the U.S. HIV/AIDS Reporting System (HARS).

Impact of technetium-99m sestamibi imaging on the emergency department management and costs in the evaluation of low-risk chest pain.

Objectives: To assess the impact of rest sestamibi scanning on emergency physicians' (EPs') diagnostic certainty and decision making (as assessed by the hypothetical disposition of patients) for 69 consenting stable patients with suspected acute cardiac ischemia and nondiagnostic electrocardiograms. The resultant impact on costs was examined as a secondary outcome.

Methods: Patients with suspected acute cardiac ischemia were injected with 25 mCi of sestamibi within two hours of active pain in one of three emergency department study sites.

Lactic acidosis and acute ethanol intoxication.

Ethanol intoxication has been widely reported as a cause of lactic acidosis. To determine the frequency and severity of ethanol-induced lactic acidosis, patients who presented to an emergency department with a clinical diagnosis of acute ethanol intoxication and a serum ethanol concentration of at least 100 mg/dL were studied. Arterial blood was sampled for lactate and blood gas determinations.

Acute suppurative salpingitis with concomitant intrauterine pregnancy.

A 20-year-old woman presented to the emergency department with a history of lower abdominal pain and recent loss of consciousness. She was admitted with a primary diagnosis of abdominal pain; ectopic pregnancy was ruled out. The culture of the endocervix was positive for Neisseria gonorrhoeae.