Emergency Department Patient Journey
85% of our admissions go through our Emergency Department. Critical decisions have to be made by our colleagues at the ED – all of which impact upon the subsequent care the patient receives. It is also a distressing and tense time for our patients and their next-of-kin (NOK).
Several initiatives have been implemented to make the patient and NOK’s experience at the ED more pleasant. Screens have been deployed at all waiting areas to display waiting times alongside broadcasted television content. To enhance patient care, the ED Decision Support System was deployed into the ED IT infrastructure to guide clinicians in making critical decisions. This system improves patient safety in a multitude of ways, while reducing cognitive load for staff through automating the decision making process.
During peak periods, more nursing staff are deployed to ED to support care on the ground. We have also started Inpatient Definitive Care and the ED Virtual Ward to enable inpatient teams to commence definitive care for patients awaiting beds at our ED. NOKs are also allowed access to their loved ones through the pager queue system. For service quality assurance, Patient Service Associates (PSA) from Quality Service Management (QSM) are also on the ground to ensure a pleasant patient experience.