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Improved Care for Neglected Population Must Be "Rule Rather Than Exception"
Rebecca Voelker
JAMA. 2002;288:299-301.
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As the director of a program aimed at training health care professionals to treat children with developmental disabilities, Kathleen Braden, MD, is all too familiar with physicians' deficits in caring for these special patient populations. As one example, she recalls a young woman in the emergency department with status epilepticus. Despite her unremitting seizure, the woman was triaged to the side for a long time. Her family became very upset, and tried to alert emergency personnel to the fact that she needed immediate medication to prevent severe brain damage.
Because the woman had mental retardation, the features of her seizure were seen as "just the way she always is," says Braden. "If someone who was not mentally retarded had come in with a seizure that was out of control and said, ‘Stop it now!' it would have been seen as an emergency. This woman was triaged to the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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