Clinical practice guidelines

The Clinical practice guidelines page has been updated to better emphasise the growing trend to making recommendations when the evidence to support them is lacking, and the reasonably common failure to appropriately evaluate sources used to support recommendations.

Age and ED LOS

The Financial issues page has been updated with new information about the relative ED LOS in Australia for patients of different ages. No surprises to anyone who has been in an ED as to which age group stays the longest.

‘4 hour rule’

The Time limited ED care targets page has been updated, including the addition of a small segment on patient types and target achievement, the (mostly hidden) negative effects of ‘clock stopping’ techniques widely employed in Australian EDs and reasons why time based targets may reduce overall productivity.

Clinical decision rules or clinical judgement?

The Clinical practice guidelines page has been updated with additional information about how often clinical decision rules in Emergency Medicine are compared with non-standardised practice, and how they fare when they are compared – and the news is not encouraging for guideline writers. Schriger, DL, Elder, JW, Cooper, RJ. Structured Clinical Decision Aids Are Seldom … Read more

NEAT admission performance and mortality

The Time limited ED care targets page has been revised and additional information about the association between improved NEAT admission performance and hospital mortality has been added. Sullivan, C, Staib, A, Khanna, S, et al. The National Emergency Access Target (NEAT) and the 4-hour rule: time to review the target. Med J Aust 2016;204(9):354.