-
Irish medical journal · Nov 2007
Why are we waiting? A study of the patients' perspectives about their protracted stays in an emergency department.
- P Gilligan, V Gupta, I Singh, S Winder, P O'Kelly, and D Hegarty.
- The Emergency Department of Beaumont Hospital, Beaumont Road, Dublin. peadargilligan@beaumont.ie
- Ir Med J. 2007 Nov 1; 100 (10): 627-9.
AbstractThe overcrowding of Emergency Departments compromises their critical function and the safety of patients and staff. This study asked the patients how the wait in overcrowded conditions impacted on them and the care they received and what they believed the reasons for the overcrowding were. A prospective questionnaire based structured interview study was performed. Over half (57.7%) of patients felt that the lack of inpatient beds and wards was the main reason that they experienced delays. An overwhelming 85.9% felt that the Health Authorities were not doing enough to address the overcrowding issue. Overcrowding of Emergency Departments has been identified as a major problem the solution is to be found in increasing the capacity of the acute hospital system according to the majority of our study population.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?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:
 - 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..