CJEM Articles: William Wertzler
Displaying 1-2 of 2 results
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May
2006
8
3
Denise Watt, Hude Quan, Timothy Cooke, William Wertzler
Objectives: To explore emergency department (ED) patient expectations regarding staff communication with patients, wait times, the triage process and information management.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional English-language telephone survey among patients aged 18 years or older who visited the EDs in the Calgary Health Region in 2002. Survey items were based on a preceding qualitative study.
Results: Of the 941 surveys, 837 were analyzed. Patients placed the highest importance on the explanation of test results (96.5%), a description of circumstances that would require the patient to return to the ED (94.4%), the use of plain language (92.1%) and the reason for the tests (90.8%). Seventy-six percent of patients felt that ED staff should update patients every 30 minutes or less, 51.3% expected patients with non-life threatening problems should wait <1 hour, and 58.3% expected that the tests should be done within 1 hour. Almost two-thirds of the patients (64.4%) believed that the most serious patients should be seen first; 59.3% felt that the seriousness of medical concern should be determined by a triage nurse, and 63.9% thought that their personal health records should be immediately available to the emergency physician without their consent. The actual length of stay was significantly longer than expected length of stay for all patient groups, with Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale Levels IV and V patients expecting a shorter wait than patients in more urgent triage groups. Triage level effects on other expectations were not observed.
Conclusions: ED patient expectations appear to be similar across all triage levels. Patients value effective communication and short wait times over many other aspects of care. They have expectations for short wait times that are met infrequently and are currently unattainable in many Canadian EDs. Although it may be neither feasible nor desirable to meet all patient expectations, increased focus on wait times and staff communication may increase both ED efficiency and patient satisfaction.
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January
2005
7
1
Denise Watt, Gordon Brannan, William Wertzler
Objectives: To explore the public's expectations of emergency department care and to compare these with emergency department staff perceptions of patient expectations.
Methods: Focus groups were conducted with the residents of Calgary, Alta., and with emergency department staff in the Calgary Health Region. Both recent users of the emergency department and people who had not used the emergency department in the past 3 years were included in this study. An experienced moderator conducted the focus groups, which were taped and then transcribed. A well established method of qualitative analysis identified common themes.
Results: The focus groups identified common expectations of emergency department care. Public expectations were categorized into 6 thematic areas: staff communication with patients, appropriate waiting times, the triage process, information management, quality of care, and improvements to existing services. Those who had recently used the emergency department had similar expectations to those who had not. Emergency department care providers understand some, but not all, of the public's expectations.
Conclusions: Public expectations of emergency department care were identified by this study. The findings are important for quality improvement initiatives and were used to develop a quantitative questionnaire.
