Reducing time to analgesia in the emergency department using a nurse-initiated pain protocol: a before-and-after study.

Suboptimal management of pain in emergency departments (EDs) remains a problem, despite having been first described over two decades ago. A 'before-and-after' intervention study (with a historical control) was undertaken in one Western Australian tertiary hospital ED to test the effect of a 'nurse-initiated pain protocol' (NIPP) intervention. A total of 889 adult patients were included: 144 in the control group and 745 in the intervention group.

Emergency department surge capacity: recommendations of the Australasian Surge Strategy Working Group.

For more than a decade, emergency medicine (EM) organizations have produced guidelines, training, and leadership for disaster management. However, to date there have been limited guidelines for emergency physicians (EPs) needing to provide a rapid response to a surge in demand. The aim of this project was to identify strategies that may guide surge management in the emergency department (ED).

ECHO: the Western Australian Emergency Care Hospitalisation and Outcome linked data project.

Objective: To describe and assess the quality of the data resources linked for the Western Australian Emergency Care Hospitalisation and Outcome (ECHO) project.

Methods: The ECHO project links electronic records from the WA Emergency Department Information System to the St John Ambulance Service Pre-Hospital Care Database, the WA Hospital Morbidity Data System and the WA Mortality Database. Linkages are created using standard probabilistic matching techniques with extensive clerical review.