SAEM Podcasts

The objective of this study was to develop a decision aid (DA) to facilitate shared decision making (SDM) around whether to obtain computed tomography (CT) imaging in patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with suspected uncomplicated ureterolithiasis.

Early access to specialized stroke care is critically important in the treatment of suspected acute stroke, but access to dedicated stroke centers is unequal and varies geographically. Among the different levels of hospitals providing stroke care, the comprehensive stroke center (CSC) is the highest designation. In many systems of stroke care, if transport to a CSC is expected to take less than a certain number of minutes, the patient is taken to the CSC even if a non-CSC hospital is closer. Transport time–based decisions like these, however, could be significantly impacted during times of heavy traffic. This study examines this potential in LA County.

Translational research in medical education requires the ability to rigorously measure learner performance in actual clinical settings; however, current measurement systems cannot accommodate the variability inherent in many patient care environments. This is especially problematic in emergency medicine, where patients represent a wide spectrum of severity for a single clinical presentation. Our objective is to describe and implement EBAM, an event‐based approach to measurement that can be applied to actual emergency medicine clinical events.

While emergency medical services (EMS) often use endotracheal intubation (ETI) or supraglottic airways (SGA), some patients receive only bag–valve–mask (BVM) ventilation during out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA). Our objective was to compare patient characteristics and outcomes for BVM ventilation to advanced airway management (AAM) in adults with OHCA.