A faculty-led resident strike team as a force expander during disaster

The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic produced an unprecedented strain on the United States medical system. Prior to the pandemic, there was an estimated 20,000 physician shortage. This has been further stressed by physicians falling ill and the increased acuity of the COVID-19 patients. Federal medical team availability was stretched to its capabilities with the large numbers of deployments. With such severe staffing shortages, creative ways of force expansion were undertaken. New Orleans, Louisiana, was one of the hardest hit areas early in the pandemic. As the case counts built, a call was put out for help. The Louisiana State University (LSU) system responded with a faculty-led resident strike team out of the LSU Health Shreveport Academic Medical Center. Residents and faculty alike volunteered, forming a multispecialty, attending-led medical strike team of approximately 10 physicians. Administrative aspects such as institution-specific credentialing, malpractice coverage, resident distribution, attending physician oversight, among other aspects were addressed, managed, and agreed upon between the LSU Health Shreveport and the New Orleans hospital institutions and leadership prior to deployment in April 2020. In New Orleans, the residents managed patients within the departments of emergency medicine, medical floor, and intensive care unit (ICU). The residents assigned to the medical floor became a new hospitalist service team. The diversity of specialties allowed the team to address patient care in a multidisciplinary manner, leading to comprehensive patient care plans and unhindered team dynamic and workflow. During the first week alone, the team admitted and cared for over 100 patients combined from the medical floor and ICU. In a disaster situation compounded by staff shortages, a resident strike team is a beneficial solution for force expansion. This article qualitatively reviews the first published incidence of a faculty-led multispecialty resident strike team being used as a force expander in a disaster.

Heart rate and heart rate variability in emergency medicine

BACKGROUND

Tachycardia may be indicative of mental stress, which in turn can decrease performance, reduce information processing capacity, and hinder memory recall. The objective of this study is to examine heart rate trends present among emergency medicine trainees over a standard emergency room shift to measure the frequency and severity of stress experienced while on shift.

METHODS

We assessed heart rate in emergency medicine residents using the Empatica E4 device, a mobile wrist-worn physiological monitor. The 31 consenting residents received training in wearing the monitor and uploading the data during a typical critical care shift. Data was deindividualized, compiled, and analyzed with descriptive statistics using Microsoft Excel.

RESULTS

Data collected from 31 critical care shifts illustrated that the mean range in HR was 53.9-162.7 bpm per shift and the overall range in HR across all shifts was 49-202.7 bpm. There was a mean of 10.2 peaks in the 120-129.9 bpm range, 11.3 peaks within 130-159.9 bpm, and 1.06 peaks above 160 bpm per shift. The mean length of time that HR rose above 130 bpm was 660.6 s per shift. Only 2 of the 31 shifts examined did not have any accelerations above 130 bpm.

CONCLUSIONS

Continuous monitoring of HR in emergency medicine residents during standard critical care shifts using a wrist-worn device found marked elevations suggestive of episodic tachycardia.

What and how are EM residents being taught to respond to the next disaster?

OBJECTIVE

Disasters, both natural and man-made, have become commonplace and emergency physicians serve on the front line. Residency may be the only time that emergency physicians are exposed to a disaster, through training, until one happens in their department; therefore, it is critical to provide residents with appropriate and timely disaster education. The goal of this study was to assess the current status of disaster education in emergency medicine (EM) residencies in the United States.

METHODS

A list of disaster topics was generated by reviewing disaster literature and validated by subject matter experts. Between May and December 2016, the authors conducted a national computerized survey of the 229 US EM residencies listed by the American Osteopathic Association and the American Medical Association. It focused on the methods of instruction and amount of time devoted to each topic.

RESULTS

Of the 229 eligible residency programs, 183 (79.9 percent) completed the survey. Of those, 98.9 percent report teaching disaster management topics. Nine of 18 disaster medicine topics were taught at >60 percent of responding programs. The most common topics were emergency management principles and mass casualty triage, while the least common was hazard vulnerability analysis. The most common method of instruction was lecture (68.5 percent) and the least common methods were journal club and field exercises.

CONCLUSIONS

Broad education in disaster medicine is provided in most US EM residencies. Standardization of topics is still lacking and would be beneficial to encourage comprehensive education. Addressing the educational gaps and curriculum methodology changes identified in this survey would increase curriculum standardization.

Hospital factors impact variation in emergency department length of stay more than physician factors

INTRODUCTION

To analyze the correlation between the many different emergency department (ED) treatment metric intervals and determine if the metrics directly impacted by the physician correlate to the "door to room" interval in an ED (interval determined by ED bed availability). Our null hypothesis was that the cause of the variation in delay to receiving a room was multifactorial and does not correlate to any one metric interval.

METHODS

We collected daily interval averages from the ED information system, Meditech©. Patient flow metrics were collected on a 24-hour basis. We analyzed the relationship between the time intervals that make up an ED visit and the "arrival to room" interval using simple correlation (Pearson Correlation coefficients). Summary statistics of industry standard metrics were also done by dividing the intervals into 2 groups, based on the average ED length of stay (LOS) from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2008 Emergency Department Summary.

RESULTS

Simple correlation analysis showed that the doctor-to-discharge time interval had no correlation to the interval of "door to room (waiting room time)", correlation coefficient (CC) (CC=0.000, p=0.96). "Room to doctor" had a low correlation to "door to room" CC=0.143, while "decision to admitted patients departing the ED time" had a moderate correlation of 0.29 (p <0.001). "New arrivals" (daily patient census) had a strong correlation to longer "door to room" times, 0.657, p<0.001. The "door to discharge" times had a very strong correlation CC=0.804 (p<0.001), to the extended "door to room" time.

CONCLUSION

Physician-dependent intervals had minimal correlation to the variation in arrival to room time. The "door to room" interval was a significant component to the variation in "door to discharge" i.e. LOS. The hospital-influenced "admit decision to hospital bed" i.e. hospital inpatient capacity, interval had a correlation to delayed "door to room" time. The other major factor affecting department bed availability was the "total patients per day." The correlation to the increasing "door to room" time also reflects the effect of availability of ED resources (beds) on the patient evaluation time. The time that it took for a patient to receive a room appeared more dependent on the system resources, for example, beds in the ED, as well as in the hospital, than on the physician.

Air medical transport of a patient with placenta accreta

Air medical transport of high-risk obstetric and postpartum patients accounts for a low number of flights nationwide. Although reflecting a low percentage, they pose potential for increased challenge because of high acuity and increased liability. High-risk obstetrical flight crew education is typically focused on care of the gestational mother and newborn infant, with less time spent on postpartum complications. While uncommon, placenta accreta is one complication that poses a significant mortality risk for postpartum patients.