Objective: Emergency departments and hospital emergency departments are important due to their critical role in providing urgent medical care to patients in dire need of medical interventions. Checking bottlenecks in new conditions and planning to reduce bed occupancy and hospitalization is needed. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the patient’s chief complain...

Background Surgery cancellation results in unavailability of the operating room and loss time. We identified the frequency of and reasons for operation cancellations after patients entered the operating room and assessed the preventability of such cancellations. Findings A retrospective chart review of all scheduled surgical procedures proposed under general anesthesia in a period spanning 20...

This paper describes the process and outcomes of an initiative to develop a system to prioritize operating room bookings for children who require elective dental treatment. This initiative had 3 objectives: to improve the timeliness of treatment in the operating room based on medical and dental need, to provide a means to identify and expedite the highest-priority cases when operating room time...

BACKGROUND Treatment of pediatric type I open fractures is controversial. Centers have reported good success with emergency room (ER) treatment of low-energy (type I) open pediatric fractures. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the treatment preferences of pediatric orthopaedic surgeons for type I open fractures. We hypothesize that surgeons will have different treatment protocols and p...

Imagine a black and white photograph. The date is 1957. The setting is an operating room at a Baltimore hospital. There is no operating table and a man lies on the floor. The man, a volunteer, is pharmacologically paralyzed and sedated. Several people are gathered around the room, some doctors, several boy scouts and other people from the community. Everyone's attention is focused on one of the...

In this paper I will describe my findings from studying during last year the use of information technology in operating theatres. Based on these findings I will present focus shift analysis as a method for analyzing complex interaction, and discuss how the use of speech commands within the operating theatre are able to address some of the breakdown found with the focus shift analysis.

BACKGROUND Emergency departments (EDs) are an essential component of any developed health care system. There is, however, no national description of EDs in Switzerland. Our objective was to establish the number and location of EDs, patient visits and flow, medical staff and organization, and capabilities in 2006, as a benchmark before emergency medicine became a subspecialty in Switzerland. M...

INTRODUCTION The self-mutilating patient is an unusual psychiatric presentation in the emergency room. Nonetheless, serious underlying psychiatric pathology and drug abuse are important background risk factors. A careful stepwise approach in the emergency room is essential, although the prognosis, follow-up, and eventual rehabilitation can be problematic.We present a unique and original case of...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to assess patients regarding their knowledge and perception of the anaesthetists' role in patient care in a developing country. SETTING The audit was conducted at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. METHODS Two hundred surgical and 102 medical out-patients were included in the audit prospectively who filled a detailed questionnaire. RESULTS...

BACKGROUND Although early proponents for each of the four basic articles of operating room clothing--gowns, caps, masks, and gloves--can be identified, it is unclear from historical commentaries when each article achieved general acceptance and was consistently worn by surgeons and by anesthesia providers. METHODS Historical photographs were identified from the Web sites of the National Libra...