“39 yo female presented in cardiac arrest after being found down with needle in her arm. Multiple epinephrine and Narcan given prior to arrival with no ROSC. Resuscitation continued briefly with PEA on monitor and patient was pronounced dead.” Every week, we review all deaths in the hospital. One of our quality nurses summarizes each case […]
Diversion Is Deadly
Every day, I get an email with all of the statistics from the previous day’s emergency department activity. The one statistic that can drive me crazy is the emergency department diversion hours. These occur when the ER goes on “divert” status which means that emergency squads are told to bypass our emergency department and take […]
America’s Increasing Suicide Rate
Suicide in the U.S. is increasing. It is the second leading cause of death for people age 10-34 and the tenth leading cause of death overall. Americans favorite method of suicide: firearms. One of the reasons for our country’s increasing suicide rate is the declining number of psychiatric beds compared to other nations. The Organisation […]
Guns, Guns, Guns
Yesterday, a man was shot a couple of miles from our hospital. Not an unusual event, people get shot every day in America’s large cities. Our hospital is not a designated trauma center but we still have gunshot victims dropped off at our front lobby by their friends – either they die in our ER or we […]
DAWN To Prevent The Dead
Every day in Ohio, 5 people die of drug overdoses. We see heroin overdoses in or ER every day. The lucky ones are brought in when they are still breathing and before they get brain damage. The unlucky ones get resuscitated in the ER and make it to the ICU but then die from anoxic […]
Psychiatric Surge
No matter what your political leanings, one thing we can all agree on is that the United States does not have enough inpatient psychiatric beds. De-institutionization of patients with psychiatric disease in the 1970’s has overall been a good thing for most patients with psychiatric disease but the consequence is that there are many patients […]
The Vital Signs Of The Emergency Department
Is your emergency department sick or is it healthy? If you want to know if a patient is sick, you start with the vital signs. Emergency departments are the same except that the vital signs are data and you have to know what data you need to know in order to assess the health and […]