Preventive Care in the Emergency Department, Part I: Clinical Preventive Services—Are They Relevant to Emergency Medicine?*

Abstract

Abstract. In 1998 the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine's (SAEM's) Board of Directors asked the SAEM Public Health and Education Task Force to develop recommendations for prevention, screening, and counseling activities to be conducted in emergency departments (EDs). The Task Force's work was divided into two phases: 1) a discussion of the rationale for preventive services in the ED, along with generation of a preliminary list of prevention activities that could be studied for ED implementation; and 2) a formal evidence-based review of topics chosen from the preliminary list, along with recommendations for ED implementation and further study. This paper represents Phase I of the project. Phase II, the formal evidence-based review and recommendations, is published separately in this issue.

Unsuspected or Unacknowledged Depressive Symptoms in Young Adult Emergency Department Patients

“…Emergency department screening for public and mental health issues is controversial, [33][34][35][36][37] yet the ED affords the only health care option for many patients. One aspect of this controversy revolves around how to handle positive results.…”

Public Health Considerations in Knowledge Translation in the Emergency Department

“…Numerous investigators have published ''calls to action'' for ED-based screening, counseling, and intervention. 1,6,7 Yet, prevention and health behavior are relatively underrepresented in the amount of time they receive in the core curriculum of EM. 11 Smoking, for example, the leading cause of preventable death and illness, is not formally represented in the core curriculum, and only 7% of all U.S. EM residencies cover the topic.…”

“…6,7 Recommendations were developed for domains in which there was literature specific to the ED setting. Recommendations were made using an evidence-based approach to determine the feasibility, barriers, resource needs, and cost-benefit tradeoffs.…”

“…This article is not a review of effective ED-based screening and preventive services; these can be found elsewhere. [4][5][6][7] Rather, it focuses on developing a research agenda focused on overcoming the barriers identified in Figure 1. 3 …”

Public Health in the Emergency Department: Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference Executive Summary

“…Several authors have offered a public health-relevant model of emergency medical practice. [6][7][8][9][10] These approaches center around the insight that many of the acute illnesses and injuries suffered by emergency department (ED) patients result from preventable or modifiable health risks, such as substance use, interpersonal violence, mental health disorders, and unsafe sexual behavior. Redesigning systems of care so that these individuals can be identified, and receive brief interventions and referrals to appropriate follow-up care, may alleviate some of the substantial burden of illness and injury caused by these health risks.…”