Over the period 1974-85 the range of mean annual new attendance rates at Accident and Emergency departments among English health districts was 36-673 per 1000 residents. The socio-economic diversity of these districts explained only one-third of the variation. The rates rose significantly (p less than 0.05) in 89 per cent of districts over the twelve years. Again, socio-economic variation only ...

Female-to-male intimate partner violence (IPV) recently has become a recognized health care issue. We screened a heterosexual male Emergency Department population for IPV using the HITS scale, a four-question survey. Two hundred eighty-two men were enrolled in the study. Basic demographics, along with the answers to the HITS scale, were analyzed. Of the men screened, 29.3% had a positive histor...

OBJECTIVE To describe the patient safety culture of Dutch emergency departments (EDs), to examine associations between safety culture dimensions and patient safety grades as reported by ED staff and to compare these associations between nurses and physicians. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey conducted in 2007. SETTING Thirty-three non-academic EDs in the Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS Four hundre...

A linear mixed model with a smooth random effects density is proposed. A similar approach to P-spline smoothing of Eilers and Marx (1996, Statistical Science 11, 89-121) is applied to yield a more flexible estimate of the random effects density. Our approach differs from theirs in that the B-spline basis functions are replaced by approximating Gaussian densities. Fitting the model involves maxi...

The national Emergency Medicine Programme (EMP) in Ireland, defines a re-attender as any patient re-presenting to the Emergency Department (ED) within 28 days with the same chief complaint. A retrospective, electronic patient record audit was carried out on all re-attenders to Connolly ED during November 2012. There were 2919 attendances made up from 2530 patients; 230 patients re-attended a to...

BACKGROUND Although there is a major need to record and analyse presenting complaints in emergency departments (EDs), no international standard exists. The aim of the present study was to produce structured complaint classification suitable for ED use and to implement it in practice. The structured classification evolved from a study of free text fields and ICPC-2 classification. METHODS Pres...

Two hundred eighty-one of 443 lung scans composed of anterior, posterior, and lateral projections (done in our hospital) demonstrated defects. In 3.9 percent of them (11 cases), the defects were delineated in the lateral views only, while in 29.2 percent (82 cases), the lateral views either outlined additional defects not appreciated on the straight views, or showed more extensive lung involvem...

Schaffer, A. J., and Avery, M. E., in Diseases of the Newborn, 3rd edn., p. 93. Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders, 1971. Scopes, J., in Recent Advances in Paediatrics, ed. D. Gairdner and D. Hull, 4th edn., p. 89. London, Churchill, 1971. 2 Gairdner, D., in Recent Advances in Paediatrics, ed. D. Gairdner, 3rd edn., p. 54. London, Churchill, 1965. ' Scopes, J., British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 1...

OBJECTIVE To study the progress and challenges with regard to universal antiretroviral (ARV) access in Free State Province, South Africa. METHODS Data from the first 4 years of the public sector ARV roll-out and selected health system indicators were used. Data were collected from the public sector ARV database in Free State Province for new patients on ARVs, average waiting times and median ...