Jeremy is a second year resident who is about to see a 25 year old female presenting with abdominal pain. During the history he notices the patient is remarkably quiet and that the patient’s male friend is answering all the questions for her. When Jeremy asks the male friend to leave the room for a moment, both the patient and the friend object. Jeremy starts wondering if this patient might be a victim …
FLOW Hacks 6 – Improving Usage of Probenecid for Skin and Soft Tissue Infections
To continue our FLOW Hacks series, Dr. Shawn Dowling writes about his team’s innovation aimed at reducing the number of Emergency Department (ED) revisits for repeated IV antibiotic administration. Setting This intervention was carried out in all of the EDs in Calgary, Alberta. Across all four sites, there is an average of 320, 000 patient visits annually. Description of the innovation In order to reduce the number of revisits to the ED for …
HiQuiPs: Preparation Part 1 – General Considerations for ED Quality Improvement Projects
You are in the middle of a busy night shift and you see a 73-year-old female with diffuse abdominal pain who is hemodynamically stable. You have a wide differential and order a CT scan to aid in the diagnosis as you begin empiric management. Three hours pass by and the CT has not been performed. This is the third time this week that this has happened. In light of this, you feel strongly …
HiQuiPs: Quality of Care and the ED
You have just finished a busy ED shift on a warm summer evening and feel that you have been able to help a lot of people today. You plan to visit a patio and relax as you have earned it! On your way out you overhear a patient and their family members saying that they came to this ED because they heard it was “the best”, and they would never go back to …
QI Series Part 3 | Differentiating Quality Improvement and Clinical Epidemiology
How do Quality Improvement methods differ from classical clinical research? This article is the last in a three-part series on Quality Improvement (QI) in health care. The first article, “What is Quality Improvement?”, defined this field of study and provided a brief history of its origins. The second article defined “quality” and briefly described tools used to achieve improvement. This article seeks to differentiate QI methods and goals from those encountered in clinical …
CAEP FEI | The CanadiEM Digital Scholars Program
Amy is a third year emergency medicine resident who loves listening to podcasts when she runs. She realizes that she loves using a variety of digital media to enhance her learning. Amy wonders if there is a fellowship opportunity where she can become a leader in digital scholarship. One of her supervisors asks her if she has heard of the CanadiEM Digital Scholars Program. With the advent of free open access medical education …