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The Manchester derby for paediatric early warning scores
There is clearly a need for a validated physiological early warning score for specific use in the paediatric emergency department (PED). In this issue, Cotterill et al compare two paediatric early warning scores developed in Manchester: the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital Early Warning System (ManCHEWS) and a modified version, the Pennine Acute Trust Paediatric Observation Priority Score (PAT-POPS). The modified score incorporates the original physiological scoring system but also takes account of the nurse's judgement and specific elements of a patient's background. This Manchester derby was a close call: but will the marginally superior accuracy of PAT-POPS for predicting hospital admission ultimately win over the simplicity of ManCHEWS?
Future emergency care: the (citizen's) jury has spoken
In Queensland, Australia, Scuffham et al took an extremely interesting approach to patient and public involvement. They convened a citizen's jury to deliberate on matters relating to the delivery of emergency care. The jury's verdict is intriguing and highly relevant to the future of Emergency Medicine. The participants were clearly amenable to alternative models of emergency healthcare delivery including care provided by allied health professionals and decisions not to transport patients to hospital from the pre-hospital environment.
What is ‘productivity’?
If you sometimes feel that measuring productivity in the Emergency Department has the potential to create a dehumanized production line (and even if you don't), this month's paper by Moffatt et al is a ‘must read’. In a series of semi-structured interviews with healthcare practitioners working in an Emergency Department, this team explores their feelings about the notion of ‘productivity’. The findings are heartening and are sure to kindle a warm feeling in the heart of any emergency physician. Hopefully this important work will lead to greater recognition of the need to retain compassion in our practice, promote an appropriate balance between ‘care’ and ‘efficiency’ and avoid the “sausage factory” mentality, to quote one of the participants.
A SuPAR new biomarker of serious illness?
In Emergency Medicine we are becoming accustomed to the use of biomarkers that may lack specificity for any one particular condition, but that provide important prognostic information. Lactate could be considered one such biomarker, and its interpretation has become an important skill for emergency physicians. This may suggest that we are at the dawn of a new era for biomarkers. Our traditional ‘binary thinking’ about diagnostics, whereby tests can simply tell us whether a patient does or does not have a particular disease, is beginning to seem crude and outdated. In this issue, Rasmussen et al measured SuPAR at the time of admission to an Acute Medical Unit in a cohort of over 4,000 patients. SuPAR was shown to predict mortality and the need for hospital re-admission even after adjustment for confounders. The findings are impressive, and this work must lead on to further research to identify how this interesting non-specific biomarker can be used to guide real life healthcare decisions.
Health inequality and the global importance of emergency care
We know surprisingly little about the relationship between emergency care provision and the impact of emergent conditions on health, internationally. Of course, emergency physicians might expect that failure to provide adequate emergency care would lead to greater mortality and morbidity from such conditions. In this issue, Chang et al quantify this problem. In an analysis from 40 countries, they found that all fifteen of the major global causes of mortality and morbidity can present emergently, and identified that insufficient access to emergency care is clearly associated with higher mortality and morbidity. This makes sobering reading as a demonstration of global health inequality, and highlights the pressing need to develop Emergency Medicine internationally.