Basic Data for Establishing the Emergency Plan to a Forty-hour workweek

BACKGROUND: Large hospitals should execute the forty-hour workweek from July 2004 as a matter of laws. Some institutes have used this system as the concept of five-day workweek since 2 years ago. To prepare for the forty-hour workweek effectively, all emergency physicians and headquarters of hospitals should make plans from this time. METHOD: We analyzed the emergency patients who visited the ER on two consecutive work-free days and ordinary days of last year. The number of patients, final results, such as admission or home discharge, the clinics participating in emergency care, and other components were analyzed according to two consecutive work-free days and the ordinary days. RESULT: The number of emergency patients who visited ER during the two consecutive work-free days was increased by 39.5~100.8% compared to the ordinary days. Although the number of emergency patients was larger during these days, the admission rate was lowered by 3.8~14.5%. Patients who were cared for by an emergency physician or a pediatric physician were markedly larger during the two consecutive work-free days, and the patients cared by an internal medicine were lower. CONCLUSION: To care for the emergency patients more effectively during the two consecutive work-free days in the forty-hour workweek system, we should increase the number of emergency physicians and pediatric physicians, and space for fast track and pediatric emergency care should be secured.

Orbital Reconstruction via Extended Transconjuctival and Transpalpebral Approach

In case of blow-out fracture involving floor or inferomedial wall, the fracture site can be accessed by methods such as subcilliary incision, mid-lower eyelid incision, infra-orbital incision and transconjunctival incision. Meanwhile, in case of orbital fracture involving supero-medial wall or roof, above-mentioned methods have the limitation of fracture site exposure, and bicoronal incision is required to overcome the difficult approach. The authors exposed fracture site widely and executed accurate reduction through extended transconjunctival approach and transpalpebral approach, instead of the approach by bicoronal incision. We executed 118 cases of orbital reconstruction by above method among 96 patients who consulted doctors to reconstruct blow-out fracture and enophthalmos from September 1997 to May 2001. Among the 118 cases were 50 cases of orbital floor fracture, 4 cases of orbital roof fracture, 48 cases of orbital medial wall fracture, 13 cases of complex type and 3 cases of enophthalmos. The authors made wide dissection of antero-superial medial wall of orbit and roof fracture of orbit enabled by above methods, which allowed enough exposure and approach to orbital fracture site and prevented side effects such as post operative lower eyelid scar or ectropion and scleral show.