Most hospital Emergency Departments (ED's) use triage systems that classify and prioritize patients almost exclusively on the basis of urgency. We propose a new triage system that incorporates patient complexity as well as urgency. Using a combination of analytic and simulation models, we demonstrate that complexity-based triage can substantially improve both patient safety (i.e., reduce risk o...

Clinical event monitors (CEMs) seek to improve patient care and reduce its cost by prompting clinicians to take actions that have these effects. To persuade clinicians to act, CEMs have used prewritten-text explanations. However, we encountered limitations of prewritten-text explanations in our CEM. Therefore, we decided to implement an advanced method for explanation (Suermondt's method for be...

An extended version of the Rasmussen’s Dynamic Safety Model was implemented to empirically index team activity during a medical emergency. The video recordings of two emergency training sessions during the simulation of an adverse event with two paramedical teams were analyzed with a coding scheme based on the model. We show that individual’s allocation of perceptions and actions to multiple wo...

According to WHO, one of these mass gatherings with critical risk is stampedes. Shanghai "12.31" stampede was a preventable tragedy that the government and event planner hold responsibility for. At the same time, it can be a legacy for improvement in the future. The government should draw experience on the implementation of an emergency preparedness system, in order to improve the rapid emergen...

Previous studies of bystander intervention in emergencies have found that an individual is more likely to intervene if he witnesses the emergency alone than as a member of a group. The present study qualifies this general finding in the framework of group communication processes. Pairs of subjects working on a task overheard a loud crash in an adjoining room. Some pairs of subjects were seated ...

Automatic reactions triggered by complex events have been deployed with great success in particular domains, among others, in algorithmic trading, the automatic reaction to realtime analysis of marked data. However, to date, reactions in complex event processing systems are often still limited to mere modifications of internal databases or are realized by means similar to remote procedure calls...

INTRODUCTION Little is known about the risk perceptions and attitudes of healthcare personnel, especially of emergency prehospital medical care personnel, regarding the possibility of an outbreak or epidemic event. PROBLEM This study was designed to investigate pre-event knowledge and attitudes of a national sample of the emergency prehospital medical care providers in relation to a potential...

Social media and Internet-based messaging systems are increasingly important platforms for risk communication. A global audience turns to these tools to seek, disseminate, and curate time-sensitive, emergency information during periods of crisis. Moreover, emergency management organizations report adopting these tools to augment their typical public information functions. Here, we use unsupervi...

Background: Heterotopic pregnancy is a rare event consisting of simultaneous intrauterine and extrauterine pregnancies. If undiagnosed, it is probable the patient will present to an Emergency Department and require emergent

Most primary care physicians report at least one emergency presenting to their office per year. Asthma, anaphylaxis, shock, seizures, and cardiac arrest are among the most common adult and childhood emergencies in the office setting. Most offices are not fully prepared for these medical emergencies. Practices can initiate a preparedness program by purchasing emergency equipment and medications ...