Empathy is a reigning topic in healthcare because of its relationship to the aims of medical practice: improved health outcomes1 adherence to treatment recommendations, improved quality of care and ...

One of the hallmarks of an emergency department (ED), compared with an urgent care, or a physician’s office, is that patients are seen by the clinicians in order of acuity, not arrival. When there are ...

Poverty and social deprivation affect health from birth to death, with morbidity increasing, mortality occurring earlier, and access to appropriate healthcare worsening along the gradient from ...

A most unusual submission for ‘The View from Here’ is a poem by Louie1 from Minnesota. Louie has chosen an original but powerful conduit in poetry to express his dread, anguish and frustration at the ...

Background Medical imaging use has increased progressively, prompting discussions about its clinical impact. Interventions to reduce low-value imaging have had varying success, as they generally do ...

Background Older patients’ attendances at EDs are rising. There are concerns that these individuals have prolonged stays, which have been shown to be associated with adverse clinical outcomes. We ...

Prevalence and epidemiology. FND is common, as highlighted by a cross-sectional study of 3781 newly referred neurology patients in Scotland, UK, which found that 15%–20% of the neurology referrals ...

Objectives Diverting patients away from the emergency department (ED) has been proposed as a solution for mitigating overcrowding. This systematic review examined the impact of interventions designed ...

The D-dimer is a stable termination product of fibrin degradation. It was introduced as a biomarker of coagulation activation in the early 1970s and first evaluated as a test to exclude venous ...

Background Increasing demand and crowding in emergency departments (EDs) remain persistent challenges for healthcare systems worldwide. A portion of these visits is avoidable, indicating they could ...

Background Febrile infants ≤90 days old with proven viral infections who may have concurrent serious bacterial infections (SBIs) remain a diagnostic dilemma. We aimed to compare the prevalence of SBIs ...

Background Severe sepsis is likely to account for around 37 000 deaths annually in the UK. Five years after the international Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) care bundles were published, care ...