Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Emergency Relief

2011; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 33; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.eem.0000406956.28489.eb

1552-3624

Anne Scheck,

COVID-19 and Mental Health

ImageImageWhy to Wear Green in the ED Did you ever wonder why scrubs are often pea-green? Here is a multiple-choice test for you: A. They are that shade because they were developed by the U.S. Army. B. Green was the “new pink” back in the 1950s and then the “new black” in the 1990s. C. Green doesn't clash with the color of blood. If you picked the last choice, you are right. You probably know that this particular hue of green is on the opposite side of the color spectrum from crimson, as in blood red. And that this drab green garb “can be refreshing to a person's sense of vision — a welcome break when you're looking up from an open chest cavity,” according to a report that explored the origins of the familiar green (or blue) hospital scrub. (Matt Soniak in Mental Floss;http://bit.ly/greenscrubs.) Got Milsh?ImageNo w t h a t coffee has g o t t e n such a clean bill of health in several studies, including a handful that show potentially promising benefits for older brains, can new products with the beany brew be far behind? Well, they are here already! If those overnight shifts are giving you yawns, you could grab some special Stay-Puft marshmallows that are now chock full of caffeine. Just pop them in chocolate milk, heat, and what have you got? An eye-opening “milsh” instead of plain old hot cocoa. Or how about a slab of bacon flavored with the stimulant? That's new, too. These coffee-containing treats can be found in the 2011 catalogue of Think- Geek, a company that bills itself as providing “stuff for the smart masses.” Or, if such fare doesn't appeal to you, you could simply do what a bunch of ED nurses did, who were studied to see what made them more alert, attentive and efficient on their night shift. They all just took brief naps while on break. (www.thinkgeek.com; Crit Care Nurse 2011;31[2]:e1.) Take a Bite Out of ED CareImageThe growing concern of dentists, as reported in a previous Emergency Relief (http://bit.ly/dentistER), is that the combination of an aging patient population and sophisticated dental procedures might mean more medical emergencies will happen prior to the typical rinse-andspit ending of a patient visit. Now comes a study in Kansas City that shows dental problems really are taking a bite out of urgent care, accounting for nearly two percent of visits to some Missouri EDs. “We found significant increasing trends” over the six years of data collection, the authors alarmingly concluded. Middle-aged and older patients generally constituted these oral-care seekers. (PublicHealthReports 2011;126[2]:210.) Bug Out — Literally Medicinalleeches have proven a boon for controlling venous congestion, and nowhere has their success been so well documented as in post-transplantation patients. So imagine the startling revelation of the health care team that discovered a man with a re-attached thumb got sepsis from the creature literally on hand to help healing. “Cultures from the leech bathwater confirmed it as the source” of infection, say doctors who reported the case. Has leech therapy suffered a setback? Or was the little sucker one of a kind? It may take time for scientists studying the data to digest the finding and flesh out an answer. (Am J Crit Care 2010;19[5]:469.) ED Alphabet SoupImageMedical slang has long been disparaged as a secret code that gives doctors and nurses a way to complain about their plight without letting anyone know except colleagues in on the jargon. But words like GOMER have gone by the wayside, dismissed in some EDs as a harsh label that should be — here comes another slang term — deep-sixed. So why are abbreviations still being used? To convey a temporary problem that a patient might find troubling, such as calling out a “404,” when a health record cannot be located or indicating substance abuse in a way that doesn't insult the patient, such as referring to AOB for “alcohol on board. ”And what ED patient likes hearing a physician pronounce them depressed, when official-sounding initials like APD can do the trick? (acute Prozac deficiency). Still, some in the health care community are wondering if using such a patient-sensitive alphabet soup goes too far. Does medicine really need BBCS — bumps, bruises, scrapes, and cuts — to confer minor injury? And would that minor-injured patient truly benefit from being told he is being issued an “ALC,” an “a la casa,” which only means “time to go home.” Well, maybe … if that same patient also qualifies for demonstrating an AHF, more commonly known as an absolute hissy fit. (http://bit.ly/EDslang.) The War of Red Tape Under extreme time pressure, what can be done to speed up procedural requirements? Well, not much, actually. From complaints about paperwork to the need to beat the clock, safety engineers and waste-control operators aired concern about the perils Eof too much bureaucracy and too little time. Some comments sounded remarkably like those heard elsewhere — in the ED. “I would like to know how you fill in the checklist when you are told to get the (clean-up) process going immediately,” said one attendee. (Waste Expo, May 9-12, 2011, Dallas.)