Critical tasks and errors associated with intercostal chest drain insertion.

Introduction: To describe critical tasks and errors associated with intercostal chest drain insertion, in order to develop enhanced procedural guidelines for task performance and training.

Methods: Expert emergency medicine physicians participated in a three-phased study. First, hierarchical task analyses was used to identify tasks, sub-tasks, and the sequence of tasks.

Treating pain in the emergency department.

The objective of this audit was to evaluate the impact of brief educational intervention on prompt recognition and treatment of pain in the emergency department. The audit was performed on all patients in the emergency department with pain presenting over a 24-h period on three occasions: preintervention, 1-week postintervention and at 4 months. In 151 patients, pain severity scores were mild (24%), moderate (42%), severe (16%) and unknown (18%).