Comparison of Japan nurse practitioner‐led care and physician trainee‐led care on patients' length of stay in a secondary emergency department: A retrospective study

AIM: We compared Japan nurse practitioner‐led care and physician trainee‐led care in terms of patients' length of stay in a secondary emergency department in Japan. METHODS: This was a retrospective observational study, utilizing medical records. Participants (n = 1419; mean age = 63.9 ± 23.4 years; 52.3% men) were patients transferred to the emergency department by ambulance between April 2016 and March 2018 in western Tokyo. Multiple linear regression analyses were performed, with length of stay as the dependent variable and factors related to the length of stay, including medical care leaders, as the independent variable. RESULTS: Approximately half of the patients (n = 763; 53.8%) received Japan nurse practitioner‐led care. Patients' length of stay was significantly shorter, by 6 min, in the Japan nurse practitioner‐led care group, compared with the physician trainee‐led care group (unstandardized coefficient: −6.81; 95% confidence interval: −13.35 to −0.26; p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Patients' shorter length of stay in the Japan nurse practitioner group, compared with the physician trainee group, suggests that Japan nurse practitioners are not inferior to physician trainees in terms of the time spent to manage patients.