nursing bibliography

Article Summary 1

Jenna Horgan

St Thomas University

NUR 416

Professor Henriquez

January 17, 2022

Article 1 Summary

Article: Kelen, G. D., Wolfe, R., D’Onofrio, G., Mills, A. M., Diercks, D., Stern, S. A., Wadman, M. C., & Sokolove, P. E. (2021). Emergency department crowding: the canary in the health care system. NEJM Catalyst.

Eight certified medical practitioners from assorted medical centers across the US wrote this peer-reviewed article. It describes the dangers posed by overcrowding in the countless emergency room departments across the country. Based on their research findings, this problem has grown increasingly dismal due to the pandemic. The article reveals that different factors cause emergency room crowding. These include health system concerns, emergency room factors, hospital-related factors, and output factors.

The health system-related factors contributing to emergency room problems include the reduced inpatient capacity in hospitals and the lack of access to inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services. Many citizens also lack access to underinsurance, which increases preventable visits to emergency room departments. Emergency-room-related factors that cause overcrowding include the lack of flexible schedules, which enable the medical practitioners to create time slots for different patients. Overcrowding is also caused by the tendency to use emergency rooms as stations to process ‘elective’ admission patients.

Hospital-related factors that cause hospitals’ overcrowding include the lack of adequate structures to deal with demand. For instance, many hospitals are not equipped to handle the type of 24/7 demand that the pandemic has occasioned. This demand also causes crisis fatigue in emergency room medical practitioners, who then slow down when processing patients. Output factors that facilitate overcrowding include the lack of adequate facilities which provide end-of-life healthcare services and the lack of training for emergency room workers.

Based on this article, institutional leaders have to work alongside elected officials and insurers to ratify disaster protocols that cater to the needs of emergency areas. Politicians have to mandate regulations that allocate financial incentives to meet training needs and fund the construction of new healthcare facilities.

Reference

Kelen, G. D., Wolfe, R., D’Onofrio, G., Mills, A. M., Diercks, D., Stern, S. A., Wadman, M. C., & Sokolove, P. E. (2021). Emergency department crowding: the canary in the health care system. The New England Journal of Medicine- NEJM Catalyst.