Overcrowding an encumbrance for an emergency health‑care system: A perspective of Health‑care providers from tertiary care center in Northern India
نویسندگان
1 Department of Anaesthesia, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India,
2 Department of Internal Medicine, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
3
4 Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
doi
چکیده
BACKGROUND: Emergency department (ED) overcrowding is one of the leading problems ofhealth‑care organizations, discerned by ED medical staff, but it has never been measured objectively.OBJECTIVE: A 2 months prospective cross‑sectional study was conducted to compare EDovercrowding measurement tools with the perceptions of ED emergency physician and ED assistantnursing superintendent (EDEP/EDANS).RESULTS: The results have shown that perceptions of ED overcrowding as noted by EDEP andEDANS, taken on a Likert scale, were 83.34% and 86.67%, respectively. Kappa values show asignificant agreement between EDEP and EDANS subjective perceptions with objective values of theNational Emergency Department Overcrowding Study (NEDOCS), Real‑time Emergency Analysis ofDemand Indicators (READI), and Emergency Department Work Index (EDWIN) scales. Furthermore,all three scales have statistically significant correlation; NEDOCS and READI had highest level ofcorrelation coefficient (r = 0.662, P < 0.01) whereas READI and EDWIN shows least correlationcoefficient value (r = 0.155, P < 0.01).CONCLUSION: Therefore, these scales may serve to quantify the subjective impressions of EDovercrowding. Evidence is clear of overcrowding harms, measures are needed to provide urgentmedical care and future work up is need of the hour to systematically evaluate interventions andguide evidence‑based policies.
