Chances are, you’ve either encountered a patient with the generic complaint of “sore throat” recently or will in the very near future. And within the scope of those encounters, you’re bound to get involved in more than one discussion about antibiotics —often with a patient who insists he absolutely must leave your office with a prescription, whether your advanced education, years of experience, and clinical judgment agree or not.

Often, that prescription will be warranted; other times, not so much. And therein lays the problem, which is one of the subjects addressed in Pharyngitis: Diagnosis and Treatment in the Urgent Care Setting (page 13) by William Gluckman, DO and Jessica Kay, PharmD.

Dr. Gluckman has contributed to JUCM in the past, as co-author of an article on urinary tract infections (JUCM, October 2007) and on an ongoing basis as a member of our Editorial Board. He is associate medical director of emergency services and associate EMS medical director at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson NJ, assistant professor of surgery at New Jersey Medical School, and medical director of the New Jersey State Police Homeland Security Section’s Urban Search and Rescue team. He is also a partner and medical director of Lifesaving Associates, LLC in Watchung, NJ, and a member of UCAOA.

Dr. Kay is currently the clinical pharmacist in the emergency department at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center. She received her doctorate degree in pharmacy from St. John’s University and completed her general residency at the Northport VAMC.

This issue also looks at another topic that may sometimes breed conflict between patient and provider or staff: time spent in the waiting room. True, it is an unavoidable fact that patients have to wait sometimes, but Managing Wait Times for Greater Customer Satisfaction (page 33) by Alan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc analyzes ways to address the cause in order to minimize negative impact on the patient’s visit and the practice in general.

Also in this issue:

Nahum Kovalski, BSc, MDCM reviews abstracts of new articles on vasopressin in cardiac arrest, the balance between playground safety and a child’s need for physical activity, the use of absorbable sutures in pediatric patients, and other relevant topics in Abstracts in Urgent Care.

John Shufeldt, MD, JD, MBA, FACEP continues his summation of bankruptcy issues as they apply to an urgent care owner in Health Law.

Frank Leone, MBA, MPH looks at the fear factor in occupational health sales—and how to use a customer’s concerns to your advantage in Occupational Medicine.

David Stern, MD, CPC addresses questions about applying discount fees; reimbursement related to change or removal of surgical dressing; and some of the intricacies of the S9088 code in Coding Q & A.

We’d like to hear from you, so if you have a thought about an article you read here—be it a challenge to one of our author’s conclusions, a general reaction to how we’re doing, or an idea for a future article, please send an e-mail to our editor- in-chief, Lee A. Resnick, MD, at .

In Memoriam
We’re sorry to report that Allan F. Moore, MD passed away July 24, 2008 from injuries he suffered in a traffic accident 12 days earlier. His wife, Dr. Rebekah Gee, was injured in the crash.

Dr. Moore co-authored our June 2008 cover article, Diabetic Emergencies in the Urgent Care Setting. He was a fellow in endocrinology and an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as a researcher on the subject of diabetes complications and disease prevention at Mass General and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Dr. Moore, who was 31-years-old, is survived by his wife, his brother, and his parents.

JUCM, The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine encourages you to submit articles in support of our goal to provide practical, uptodate clinical and practice management information to our readers — the nation’s urgent care clinicians. Articles submitted for publication in JUCM should provide practical advice, dealing with clinical and practice management problems commonly encountered in day-to-day practice.

Manuscripts on clinical or practice management topics should be 2,600–3,200 words in length, plus tables, figures, pictures, and references. Articles that are longer than this will, in most cases, need to be cut during editing.

We prefer submissions by e-mail, sent as Word file attachments (with tables created in Word, in multicolumn format) to . The first page should include the title of the article, author names in the order they are to appear, and the name, address, and contact information (mailing address, phone, fax, e-mail) for each author.

Before submitting, we recommend reading “Instructions for Authors,” available here.