• Emerg Med Australas · Oct 2024

    Effectiveness of a Disability Liaison Officer service in a metropolitan emergency department.

    • Elizabeth O'Shannessy, Carly Talarico, Douglas McCaskie, Ali Lakhani, Christine Koolstra, Janine Standen, Karen Roberts, SmitDe VilliersVEmergency and Trauma Centre, The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia., and Biswadev Mitra.
    • Allied Health, The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
    • Emerg Med Australas. 2024 Oct 18.

    ObjectivesTo identify the influence of a Disability Liaison Officer (DLO) service in the ED setting on people with disability (PWD). For this project, PWD included adults with communication disability, intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder.MethodsThis was a single-centre retrospective cohort study, at an adult major referral ED in Melbourne, Australia. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they were ≥18 years of age, presented to the ED between 1 April 2022 and 30 April 2023, and had a disability alert in their electronic medical record. Eligible patients were divided into two cohorts: (i) patients managed using standard ED care and (ii) patients managed using DLO model. ED length of stay (LOS) was the main outcome measure.ResultsAfter adjusting for baseline differences in age, initial GCS and disability type, the DLO service was associated with earlier disposition from the ED (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 1.44; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.23-1.69; P < 0.001). For the subgroup of patients discharged directly from the ED, the association of DLO service and earlier disposition remained statistically significant (aHR 2.47; 95% CI: 1.83-3.33; P < 0.001). Among patients admitted to the emergency short stay unit (aHR 1.67; 95% CI: 0.99-2.80; P = 0.06), and those admitted to inpatient wards (aHR 0.89; 95% CI: 0.65-1.23; P = 0.50), there was no significant association of the DLO service with time to disposition.ConclusionsThe DLO service was associated with a reduction in ED LOS for PWD. Further assessment of the service using patient- and carer-reported outcome measures and cost-effectiveness studies are indicated.© 2024 The Author(s). Emergency Medicine Australasia published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…