Lindee Abe, APRN A 58-year-old patient presents to the emergency department for several months of fatigue, night sweats, and decreased appetite. The patient is afebrile and has several bruises noted on their arms and legs. Laboratory testing is complete, and the patient’s white blood cell (WBC) count is 110,000/μL. How do you manage this patient? …
Rachel Beatty, APRN The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has recently released updated guidelines and management for complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs). These guidelines represent IDSA’s first dedicated cUTI guidance covering both men and women. This marks a major scope expansion from previous UTI-focused guidelines. Clinical decision making is now centered around clinical presentation …
Scott Biggs, PA-C Urgent Care Centers provide an alternative for good care! Imagine it’s Friday afternoon and you have a sore throat. It’s been bothering you for a few days now. As the morning went by today it has steadily gotten worse. You took some ibuprofen and had some hot soup for lunch, but it …
Lindee Abe, APRN Patient satisfaction is a term that is generally viewed negatively by many healthcare providers. It is brought up frequently during unit meetings and is also emphasized when looking at provider performance. Many providers also associate the term patient satisfaction with being forced into making medical decisions based on unwarranted patient demands (such …
By Rob Beatty, MD FACEP If you’ve spent any time in an emergency department, you’ve heard the whispers: “Could this be nec fasc?” It’s the boogeyman of soft tissue infections — the dreaded necrotizing fasciitis. It’s rare, yes, but when it hits, it moves fast and kills faster. You won’t always catch it early, but …
Lindee Abe, APRN It seems that once or twice a year, there is a news story about a brain-eating amoeba where the headline sounds like a science fiction horror movie. To be fair, the infection does sound horrendous and has a high mortality rate. I was familiar with the amoeba from when I went through …
