Managing healthcare worker well‐being in an Australian emergency department during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Emergency Medicine staff in Australia and New Zealand are at the forefront of the healthcare response to COVID‐19. This article describes a well‐being plan for ED staff that has been devised to mitigate against the negative psychological impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic.     

Is routine extubation overnight safe in cardiac surgery patients?

Objectives

Expedient extubation after cardiac surgery has been associated with improved outcomes, leading to postoperative extubation frequently during overnight hours. However, recent evidence in a mixed medical-surgical intensive care unit population demonstrated worse outcomes with overnight extubation. This study investigated the impact of overnight extubation in a statewide, multicenter Society of Thoracic Surgeons database.

Measured and predicted resting energy expenditure in wheelchair rugby athletes

Objective: Report measured resting energy expenditure (REE) in wheelchair rugby athletes and evaluate agreement between REE and the prediction models of Chun, Cunningham, Harris-Benedict, Mifflin, Nightingale and Gorgey, and Owen.

Design: Cohort-based validation study.

Setting. Paralympic team training camp.

Participants: Fourteen internationally competitive athletes who play wheelchair rugby, 13 of whom had cervical spinal cord injuries (SCI).

Outcome Measures: A portable metabolic analyzer was used to measure REE following an overnight fast and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to assess lean body mass for the prediction equations.

Results: REE in the current sample was 1735?±?257?kcal?×?day^?1 ranging from 1324 to 2068?kcal?×?day^{?1 Bhambhani Y. Physiology of wheelchair racing in athletes with spinal cord injury. Sports Med 2002;32(1):23–51.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]}. Bland–Altman analyses revealed negative mean bias but similar limits of agreement between measured REE and scores predicted by Chun, Cunningham, Mifflin, Nightingale and Gorgey, and Owen models in elite athletes who play wheelchair rugby.

Conclusion: Prediction models regressed on persons with and without SCI under-predicted REE of competitive wheelchair rugby athletes. This outcome may be explained by the higher REE/fat-free mass (FFM) ratio of current athletes compared to less active samples. Findings from the current study will help practitioners to determine nutrient intake needs on training days of varied intensity.