INTRODUCTION One in 5 women is a victim of sexual assault. This study examines the administration of emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault in North Carolina hospital emergency departments. METHODS One hundred seventeen surveys were mailed to hospital emergency departments across the state to determine their emergency contraception practices for victims ofsexual assault. The sur...

Children who require emergency care have unique needs, especially when emergencies are serious or life-threatening. The majority of ill and injured children are brought to community hospital emergency departments (EDs) by virtue of their geography within communities. Similarly, emergency medical services (EMS) agencies provide the bulk of out-of-hospital emergency care to children. It is impera...

BACKGROUND Availability of primary care emergency facilities has been improved to help curb heavy growth in the use of Accident and Emergency Departments (A&EDs). The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between time series for visits to hospital A&EDs and primary care centres. METHODS Using a co-integration time series we analyse the visits to the emergency services of the county...

This study examined whether Winnipeg hospitals experience predictable "high-volume periods" in order to determine whether hospital overcrowding might be anticipated and, therefore, avoided. We found that high-volume periods among medical patients occurred during all but one year between 1987 and 1998. Most high-volume periods occurred during influenza seasons. Preventing such recurrent bed pres...

The rate of patients who visit emergency departments (EDs) but leave before being evaluated and treated is an important indicator of ED performance. This study examines patient- and hospital-level characteristics that may increase the risk of patients leaving EDs before being seen. The data are from the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System, an administrative database, and represent 4.3 mil...

This study tests whether the rate of inappropriate hospital admissions is high in areas with high medical admission rates. Seventy small geographic areas were formed by grouping Massachusetts ZIP codes by similarity of hospital use. Appropriateness of hospital admission was measured both by applying the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol and by applying physicians' judgment to the medical reco...

Background Aging is an urgent global-scale issue and Japan is the frontrunner of aging. Emergency department (ED) admission of the oldest-old challenges emergency physicians and polypharmacy has been considered as one of its possible risk factors. The aim of this study was to analyze hospital admission among patients aged 85 years and older using ambulance transport regarding its relationship w...

INTRODUCTION As an emerging and rapidly growing specialty, academic hospitalists face unique challenges in career advancement. Key mentoring needs, especially developing reputation and relationships outside of their institution are often challenging. METHODS We describe the structure of a novel Visiting Professorship in Hospital Medicine Program. It utilizes reciprocal exchanges of hospitalis...