Emergencies: processes and pathologies

Problem

Emergency medicine has the principal mission of acting on any health condition during the acute phase. This initial care is uniquely and exclusively provided by emergency care professionals and has important implications in terms of patient survival and prognosis, especially in time-dependent conditions such as sepsis, acute myocardial infarctions, stroke, and heart failure, among others. Improved knowledge about emergency care processes is leading to continuous progress, which has a major care and organisational impact on the health system in both the short and long term.

Approach

The continuous cross-disciplinary nature of disease mean that the emergency services sequentially share care with other specialist areas. In other words, after the initial emergency care, the patient is referred to each of the different hospital specialist areas, depending on their illness.

Consolidating research (basically clinical research) in emergency processes (particularly the most prevalent ones) makes it possible to improve our knowledge of them and generate new research lines. This improves patient care and promotes the optimisation and the continuity of the medical process.

Impact

In recent years, the group has exponentially increased its research activity, with its global impact factor rising from 37.46 in 2016, to 235.95 in 2017. This upwards trend has continued during the past year.

As a result of this research work, modifications have been made in certain areas of care practice such as heart failure, chest pain, and intoxicated patient care. Furthermore, the group has promoted the creation of national and international work networks, which are especially relevant in a world where multidisciplinary working and teamwork are of fundamental importance.