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Analgesia in the Emergency Department: A GRADE-based Evaluation of Research Evidence and Recommendations for Practice

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Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2013

Part of the book series: Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine ((AUICEM))

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Abstract

Emergency physicians care for patients with pain on an extremely frequent basis [1–20]. The prevalence of pain as the presenting complaint of patients seeking emergency department (ED) care ranges from 38 % [3] to as high as 78 % [1]. As a result, evidence-based use of analgesics should be a foundational skill of emergency physicians. However, the literature consistently reports that emergency physicians are often poor at treating pain [1, 2, 8, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20]. Notwithstanding the prevalence of pain in the ED, many patients often report that their pain was not properly treated [3, 7, 20]. In addition to a compromised patient experience, sub-optimal treatment of pain will result in decreased department flow, increased wait times, more return visits to the ED, and increased hospitalization rates.

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Acknowledgement:

We thank Dr Helen Lee-Robertson, librarian at the University of Calgary Health Sciences Center, for her contributions to this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, Alberta Health Services, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    C. Lipp, R. Dhaliwal & E. Lang

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  1. C. Lipp
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  2. R. Dhaliwal
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  3. E. Lang
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Correspondence to E. Lang .

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  1. Erasme Hospital, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Jean-Louis Vincent Prof.

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Lipp, C., Dhaliwal, R., Lang, E. (2013). Analgesia in the Emergency Department: A GRADE-based Evaluation of Research Evidence and Recommendations for Practice. In: Vincent, JL. (eds) Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2013. Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35109-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35109-9_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-35108-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35109-9

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