proposal

1. BACKGROUND

The emergency department is a facility for medical treatment that is mostly concerned with care for patients who require urgent treatment. This patient’s mostly just pop in without any prior appointment. This is a very serious attendance, as these patients just come with life threatening illnesses, which needs emergency attendance. The emergency unit is very complex, and a place where people don’t understand how the next minute will be like. The difference between life and death is always a hair breadth away (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010). The greatest concern of the emergency department, therefore, is to reduce the waiting time for the patients. Most of them can’t wait for long due to the conditions they come in. It’s so disheartening for these patients to come to the hospital and leave when they are not treated. This project will focus on the emergency departments in the county hospitals, specifically in San Francisco General Hospital. It serves a total of 1.5 million people but has only one Trauma center. This is very dangerous because such a big population can be at a higher risk. It’s good therefore to come up with solutions that could also be helpful to other hospitals apart from this one this one in question.

2. OBJECTIVES

1. To reduce waiting time

2. Maximize patients transfer.

3. METHODS

1. Addition of more resources

2. The Emergency department to improve their relationship and communication with one another

4. RECOMMENDATION ONE: TO REDUCE WAITING TIME

To reduce the waiting time, there must be an addition of resources such as beds, doctors, nurses inclusive of others (Ojeda, 2004). There can be an expansion of alternatives too. This is for the purpose of helping the patients to make health care choices. This will reduce the pressure in the system. This can be done by the ministry of education through supporting the patients with chronic illnesses (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010). They can also create a bigger space by increasing the bed capacity or even creating more urgent centers. It could also help to teach people on how to handle some diseases on their own. This creation of public awareness will reduce the overlap of patients in the hospital (Hall, 2010).

Another way to reduce waiting time is by putting patients before profits. Sometimes, the reason people wait for hours just to see a doctor is because, they are not bringing profits to some individual’s pocket. This is not the right thing to do especially in a hospital setup because life is better than money. The patients should be made a priority over other things. This is not to say that corruption is the main reason there is a delay, but sometimes it contributes to. Looking at private hospitals where they charge any amount, I have never seen any moment their patients complain of being delayed. These hospitals get money and give their best. Thus, patients, no matter how much they are paying, they should be treated without delay, unless otherwise (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010).

Another way of reducing waiting time has a common waiting list. Sometimes patients can behave weird. They know they can’t treat themselves, and that’s why they came to the hospital, and they won’t heed to the hospitals orders. You will hear some of them in their dying beds specializing on the doctor and the surgeon they want to see. If the patients can be made to understand the importance of seeing a surgeon who is available, the better. This will reduce the time for waiting. If they just wait until they get the physician they want, then they will have to wait longer.

It could also help to have a better coordination in the Emergency departments. Time should be taken care of. When there are snuggeries to be done, there are a lot of things that needs to be done during the preparation. The surgical equipment’s need to be standardized. There are also other procedures that include pre-screening and testing. If all this activities are well coordinated, there can be a lot of time left over for other patients (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010).

It is also very important to expand the team work. For any hospital unit to be complete we need the physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and other health professionals. If a hospital unit is made of this combination, which can corporate and have a great team work, then, coordination of activities will be faster. Again, if they work in their areas of specialization, there will be good utilization of scarce resources and the reduction of waste (Hall, 2010). .

I also recommend that, to solve the problem of long waiting still, there should have modernization of electronic information system. When hospitals use manual means of records, before finding out the details of the patients, it takes all the time. If the patients records are stored electronically, in this case being updated, the time that would be saved, would be utilized to attend another patient.

Lastly on this, is important to improve community health care. Home care and home support keeps people out of the hospitals for long. If people can eat healthily, and they be shown how to practice healthy living, the emergency units could have less and fewer people. This could be a long time plan, but it’s worth it (Hall, 2010). Improvement of access to family heath care, whereby there are built community clinics and urgent health care censer, there will be less and lesser queue in the ERs.

5. RECOMMENDATION TWO: INCREASING THE TRANSFER OF PATIENTS

Internships handovers of physicians has been identified as an area of a very great risk, for adverse effects, which represents a very critical step in the care transition of patients. The most important of all steps that can solve this is communication that is clear (Lowers, 1998). Today, in most hospitals, patients are cared for by a team of many doctors and many nurses. This doctor keeps on going off shift and the next one comes in to continue with the shift. In the middle of all this, it is important for the outgoing doctor to pass on clear information to the incoming one. There are some patients who feel like this method denies them an opportunity to have their privacy. They can be made to understand that this is for their own good. There is a new technology that is of great help in this process of transferring information, from one doctor to another as they exchange shifts. Use of tapes for the doctors to record what they are doing is a bit difficult. This is because; it does not pass on clear information due to background noises and other challenges. Sometimes the records might take all the time due to interruptions, which bring a need for a repeated process (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010).

6. GAIN

The greatest gain of this recommendation processes is that, it will reduce the queuing time for the patients. There is nothing painful like having a patient, who is in pain, sited down for hours, just to wait for treatment. In this case, it is not less severe ailments such as flu, but very serious ones such as a heart attack (Garcia, & Schaffer, 2010). The above recommendations are very important if waiting time is to be reduced, and the handoffs of doctors are effective, this process can be so smooth. The aftermath of every treatment is for the patient to get well.

7. RESOURCES

As said earlier, resources are very important. There is nothing that can be achieved, unless the necessary resources are put into the process (Hall, 2010). . The reason the time on waiting is too long is contributed somehow but scares resources. Extra resources are, therefore, needed.

References

Garcia, C., & Schaffer, M. (2010). Population-based public health clinical manual: The Henry Street model for nurses (Second ed.).

Hall, R. (2010). Patient flow: Reducing delay in healthcare delivery (Second ed.).

Lowers, J. (1998). Medical guidelines and outcomes at work: 25 approaches to improving care and lowering costs ([2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Capitol Publications.

Ojeda, A. (2004). Health. San Diego, Calif.: Thomson/Gale ;.