TY - JOUR T1 - The Q**** Study – basic randomised evaluation of attendance at a children's emergency department JF - Emergency Medicine Journal JO - Emerg Med J SP - A11 LP - A11 DO - 10.1136/emj.2010.103150.31 VL - 27 IS - Suppl 1 AU - Graham Johnson Y1 - 2010/09/01 UR - http://emj.bmj.com/content/27/Suppl_1/A11.2.abstract N2 - Introduction Health Professionals are superstitious; be it a little ritual before sitting a cannula, or wearing a particular item of clothing while on-call, there are many things that we irrationally do day-to-day. One of the most well known superstitions is that uttering the word “quiet” (Q****) will immediately turn what has previously been a pleasant day into an extremely busy one. This belief is strongly at odds with modern Evidence Based Medicine, in fact a thorough literature review revealed no published research in this area. The aim of this study was to establish if there was any evidence that saying the word “Q****” influenced the number of attendances to a Children's Emergency Department. Method We measured attendance during three time periods per day for the study duration (A – 00:00 to 07:59; B – 08:00 to 15:59; C – 16:00 to 23:59). At the beginning of each time period a randomised envelope was opened that contained either the word “Q****”, “Busy” or was blank, this prompted the doctor and nurse in charge to utter a sentence containing the word from the envelope, which was also displayed for the rest of the 8 h. Results 1454 patients were included in the intervention period and 2818 were included in the 4 week control period to measure typical attendance. Mean attendance for intervention and control were: A 7.29 and 7.71; B 40.86 and 40; C 55.57 and 52.86 respectively. “Q****” and Busy were uttered 12 times each. There was no statistically significant difference in attendance for either word. Conclusion This study has shown that the long-held belief that saying the word ‘Quiet’ has dire consequences is unfounded. We would recommend further research to explore whether other words could be used to influence Emergency Department attendances. ER -