M J Schull

..To evaluate the effect of emergency department (ED) clinical decision units (CDUs) on overall ED patient flow in a pilot project funded in 2008 by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC)...

..Among ED headache patients meeting LASH criteria, the authors believe use of this model could result in more efficient use of resources, minimal additional morbidity, and equal diagnostic accuracy for SAH...

..Efforts to control an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Toronto, Canada, led to the imposition of major restrictions on nonurgent use of hospital-based services...

..Influenza has been linked to emergency department (ED) crowding, yet few studies have examined this association. We describe the relationship between ED crowding and influenza outbreaks...

..We estimate the effect of emergency department (ED) crowding on door-to-needle time for patients given intravenous thrombolysis for suspected acute myocardial infarction...

..Prehospital strategies can reduce time to reperfusion. We sought to determine the extent to which emergency medical services (EMS) use these strategies in Canada...

..Influenza outbreaks have been associated with worsened emergency department (ED) crowding. We sought to examine the mechanism behind this association...

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..A minimization algorithm will ensure balanced allocation of the intervention with respect to these factors in study hospitals...

..One proposed strategy to increase hospital surge capacity is to restrict elective hospitalizations, yet the degree to which this measure would meet the anticipated is unknown...

..To test this question, we study the effect of low-complexity ED patients on the waiting times of other patients...

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..We describe the impact of these restrictions on health care utilization and suggest lessons for future epidemics...

..To estimate the benefit of routine electrocardiographic (ECG) telemetry monitoring on in-hospital cardiac arrest survival...

..Better training and teamwork may allow for clearer thinking in emergencies, so that knowledge can be translated into effective action and better patient outcomes...

..We sought to develop a consensus on a prioritized and parsimonious set of evidence-based quality of care indicators for EDs...

..The authors sought to determine the impact of systematic hospital restructuring on ED overcrowding...

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..Emergency department overcrowding sometimes results in diversion of ambulances to other locations. We sought to determine the resulting prehospital delays for cardiac patients...

..To determine the effect of simultaneous ambulance diversion at multiple emergency departments (EDs) (gridlock) on transport delays for patients with chest pain...

..We estimated the population-based rate of missed SAH among emergency department (ED) patients and examined its relationship with hospital characteristics...

..CONCLUSION: Admitted patients in the ED are important determinants of ambulance diversion, whereas nurse hours and most emergency physicians are not. Reducing the volume of walk-in patients is unlikely to lessen the use of diversion...

..An awareness of these specific human fallibilities might help clinicians avoid some errors when eliciting a patient's past medical history...

..Little is known about the risks of urgent air-medical transport used in regionalized health care systems. We sought to determine the incidence of in-transit critical events and identify factors associated with these events...

..We test whether the balance between daily hospital admissions and discharges affects next-day ED length of stay...

..We offer a number of tips ranging from knowing your outcomes first to proactively getting involved in developing report cards...

..These insights might help clinicians avoid mistakes when eliciting a patient's history of present illness...

..We surveyed emergency physicians to determine their perception of current occupancy rates of CEM and to assess their attitudes toward prescribing monitors for low-risk chest pain patients in the ED...

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..Restrictions on non-urgent hospital care imposed to control the 2003 Toronto severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak led to substantial disruptions in hospital clinical practice, admission, and transfer patterns...

..We undertook this initiative to develop an updated set of evidence-based indicators to measure and improve the quality of care for this patient population...

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..We examined recent national trends in mortality and rates of hospital admission for these 3 conditions...

..Temporal trends in risk factors for cardiovascular disease and the impact of socio-economic status on these risk factors remain unclear...

..Although approximately one third of patients with heart failure (HF) visiting the emergency department (ED) are discharged home, little is known about their care and outcomes...

..We sought to determine some of the reasons why ED triage is failing in these patients...

..The type of outpatient physician care after an emergency department visit for heart failure may affect patients' outcomes. Methods and..

..Randomized trials have shown that medical and interventional therapies improve outcomes for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients. The extent to which hospital quality improvement translates into better patient outcomes is unclear...

..We evaluated the utility of CEM in ED patients with chest pain...

..The flexibility of quantile regression models makes them particularly well suited to out-of-hospital research, and they may allow for more relevant evaluation of out-of-hospital system performance...

..We set out to describe ventilation practice, the use of lung-protective ventilation strategies, administration of sedation and neuromuscular blockade, and related critical events during out-of-hospital transport of ventilated patients...

..The objective of this paper is to describe the epidemiology of ED visits for firearm-related and knife-related penetrating trauma in one Canadian province...

..This paper discusses the context and consequences of complex emergencies from the health standpoint, and explores some of their unexpected effects...

..The challenge is to remain alert to these often hidden, but extremely destructive, crimes in the midst of a chaotic emergency relief setting...

..CONCLUSIONS: For alert patients with trauma who are in stable condition, the CCR is superior to the NLC with respect to sensitivity and specificity for cervical-spine injury, and its use would result in reduced rates of radiography...

..We tested whether the "healthy immigrant effect" extends to the risk of placental dysfunction during the short interval of pregnancy...

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..We undertook a qualitative study to determine, from a researcher's perspective, the strengths and weaknesses of EHS administrative databases. The study also elicited researchers' suggestions to improve these databases...

..Studies are needed to determine whether modifying a woman's metabolic profile before pregnancy, through modest caloric restriction and increased physical activity, can lower her future risk of PD...

..Our objectives are to determine the accuracy of the Canadian CT Head Rule (CCHR) in this important subset, the prevalence of patients requiring urgent intervention, and their clinical course and possible warning signs...

..Our aim was to assess the risk of premature vascular disease in women who had had a pregnancy affected by maternal placental syndromes...

..This study aimed to compare ED visit rates in the United States and Ontario, Canada, according to demographic and clinical characteristics...