No abstract

We studied the association between calendar and weather variables and daily unscheduled patient volume in a walk-in clinic and emergency department. Calendar variables (season, week of month, day of week, holidays, and federal check-delivery days) and weather variables (high temperature and snowfall) forecasted clinic volume, explaining 84% of daily variance and 44% of weekday variance. Staffing according to predicted volume could have decreased overstaffing from 59% to 15% of days, but would have increased understaffing from 2% to 18% of days. Models using calendar and weather data that forecast local utilization may help to schedule staffing for walk-in clinics and emergency departments more efficiently.

The results of bedside clinical examinations predict the presence of obstructive airways disease. A nomogram based on a combination of four bedside findings predicts airflow obstruction as well as clinicians' overall clinical impressions.

At the 2-week follow-up, clinical symptoms and radiograph scores improved equally following 3 or 10 days of TMP/SMX plus oxymetazoline nasal spray. Symptomatic relapse and recurrence were similar between groups. Three days of antibiotics were as effective as 10 days and, because of the high disease prevalence, hold the potential for substantial cost savings.

The authors measured the blood pressures of 36 subjects who had bare and sleeved arms to determine the effect of wearing sleeves on automatic oscillometric blood pressure measurements. They found no statistically significant effect of sleeves on the measurement of either systolic or diastolic blood pressure (p > 0.15). However, based on confidence intervals of possible sleeve effects, the authors recommend repeating blood pressure measurements on bared arms when the sleeved-arm oscillometric measurements are at least 86 mm Hg diastolic or 135 mm Hg systolic.