Running head: SOLVING EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT DELAYS 1

Solving Emergency Department Delays

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SOLVING EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT DELAYS 2

The emergency department is one of the most critical departments in healthcare. The department

is necessary for medical care of patients that present without any prior appointment. However,

the department faces various challenges that tend to hinder its performance. One of these

challenges is delays. This is a common challenge that needs to be solved to improve the

efficiency of the organ. There are several ways of solving this problem which include staffing of

the emergency department, redeploying the nursing staff, and modification of the physician staff.

Most of the departments have a problem of staffing adequately. For instance, on weekdays

during the off-hours peaks, the departments are understaffed. This situation creates delays during

the busier times and a waste of resources during the slower times. Therefore, the departments can

prevent delays by studying patients’ volume over time (McElfish et. Al., 2018). Such study will

enable the Emergency Department to staff appropriately and accurately all the hours.

The other solution is the redeployment of the nursing staff. The triage system, which involves

nurses asking the same questions that doctors ask patients during admission cause waste of time.

Instead, it is important that nurses be moved from the triage into patient care thus making the

physician the first contact after patient registration. By doing so, the number of personnel taking

care for the emergency patients will increase thus a quicker treating process. This whole process

frees up nurses who then increase the number of nurses taking care of patients at the Emergency

Department.

Modifying the physician staffing can also be another strategy that can check delays in the

department. Instead of insisting on board-certified doctors, the Emergency Department can use

both emergency physicians and family medicine practitioners (McElfish et. Al., 2018). This will
SOLVING EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT DELAYS 3

avail more physicians to the department, and thus patients will be attended to as soon as they

arrive.

In conclusion, staffing the emergency department, redeploying nursing staff, and physician

staffing increases the number of personnel attending to emergency patients. Therefore,

application of the outlined solution will help in reducing delays in the emergency department and

thus increase its overall efficiency.

SOLVING EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT DELAYS 4

Reference

McElfish, P. A., Chughtai, A., Low, L. K., Garner, R., & Purvis, R. S. (2018). ‘Just doing the best we

can’: health care providers’ perceptions of barriers to providing care to Marshallese patients in

Arkansas. Ethnicity & health, 1-14.