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A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital
BACKGROUND: To carry out a time and motion study of patients presenting at the Emergency Department (ED) by measuring waiting times at the ED dept throughout the day. The objectives were: • to determine whether waiting times are prolonged, and • if prolonged, at which station(s) bottlenecks occur mo...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3212980/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22008520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-421 |
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author | Azzopardi, Matthias Cauchi, Marija Cutajar, Karl Ellul, Robert Mallia-Azzopardi, Charles Grech, Victor |
author_facet | Azzopardi, Matthias Cauchi, Marija Cutajar, Karl Ellul, Robert Mallia-Azzopardi, Charles Grech, Victor |
author_sort | Azzopardi, Matthias |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: To carry out a time and motion study of patients presenting at the Emergency Department (ED) by measuring waiting times at the ED dept throughout the day. The objectives were: • to determine whether waiting times are prolonged, and • if prolonged, at which station(s) bottlenecks occur most often in terms of duration and frequency. Results will be compared to the United Kingdom guidelines of stay at the emergency department. METHODS: A group of 11 medical students monitored all patients who attended ED between 0600 hours on the 25(th )August and 0600 hours on the 1st September 2008. For each 24 hour period, students were assigned to the triage room and the 3 priority areas where they monitored all patient-related activity, movement and waiting times so that length of stay (LOS) could be recorded. The key data recorded included patient characteristics, waiting times at various ED process stages, tests performed, specialist consultations and follow up until admitted, discharged, or referred to another hospital area. Average waiting times were calculated for each priority area. Bottle-necks and major limiting factors were identified. Results were compared against the United Kingdom benchmarks - i.e. 1 hour until first assessment, and 4 hours before admitting/discharge. RESULTS: 1779 patients presented to the ED in the week monitored. As expected, patients in the lesser priority areas (i.e. 2 & 3) waited longer before being assessed by staff. Patients requiring laboratory and imaging investigations had a prolonged length of stay, which varied depending on specific tests ordered. Specialty consultation was associated with longer waiting times. A major bottleneck identified was waiting times for inpatient admission. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, it was found that 30.3% of priority 1 patients, 86.3% of priority 2 patients and 76.8% of priority 3 patients waited more than 1 hour for first assessment. We conclude by proposing several changes that may expedite throughput. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3212980 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32129802011-11-11 A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital Azzopardi, Matthias Cauchi, Marija Cutajar, Karl Ellul, Robert Mallia-Azzopardi, Charles Grech, Victor BMC Res Notes Research Article BACKGROUND: To carry out a time and motion study of patients presenting at the Emergency Department (ED) by measuring waiting times at the ED dept throughout the day. The objectives were: • to determine whether waiting times are prolonged, and • if prolonged, at which station(s) bottlenecks occur most often in terms of duration and frequency. Results will be compared to the United Kingdom guidelines of stay at the emergency department. METHODS: A group of 11 medical students monitored all patients who attended ED between 0600 hours on the 25(th )August and 0600 hours on the 1st September 2008. For each 24 hour period, students were assigned to the triage room and the 3 priority areas where they monitored all patient-related activity, movement and waiting times so that length of stay (LOS) could be recorded. The key data recorded included patient characteristics, waiting times at various ED process stages, tests performed, specialist consultations and follow up until admitted, discharged, or referred to another hospital area. Average waiting times were calculated for each priority area. Bottle-necks and major limiting factors were identified. Results were compared against the United Kingdom benchmarks - i.e. 1 hour until first assessment, and 4 hours before admitting/discharge. RESULTS: 1779 patients presented to the ED in the week monitored. As expected, patients in the lesser priority areas (i.e. 2 & 3) waited longer before being assessed by staff. Patients requiring laboratory and imaging investigations had a prolonged length of stay, which varied depending on specific tests ordered. Specialty consultation was associated with longer waiting times. A major bottleneck identified was waiting times for inpatient admission. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, it was found that 30.3% of priority 1 patients, 86.3% of priority 2 patients and 76.8% of priority 3 patients waited more than 1 hour for first assessment. We conclude by proposing several changes that may expedite throughput. BioMed Central 2011-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3212980/ /pubmed/22008520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-421 Text en Copyright ©2011 Cauchi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Azzopardi, Matthias Cauchi, Marija Cutajar, Karl Ellul, Robert Mallia-Azzopardi, Charles Grech, Victor A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title | A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title_full | A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title_fullStr | A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title_full_unstemmed | A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title_short | A time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at Mater Dei Hospital |
title_sort | time and motion study of patients presenting at the accident and emergency department at mater dei hospital |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3212980/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22008520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-421 |
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