Overuse of Emergency Departments

Emergency departments reduce admissions

Background It has been discussed whether emergency departments (EDs) reduce hospital admissions or not, and if the high turnover of patients results in higher readmission rates. Region Zealand was one of the first regions in Denmark to establish EDs, where all the acute patients for the hospital should be received: Køge and Holbæk (no beds, doctors employed by and working only in the ED), Nykøb...

Patient satisfaction with emergency departments.

Emergency Departments, simulation and leadership

Methods We accomplished three training courses with twelve participants attending course. The first two days were theoretical introductions and the third day was a practical exercise, where the theories and tools learned at the first two days were tested in a case-based full-scale simulation with debriefing afterwards. The simulation reflected different set-ups from a busy clinical day where th...

Triage in Norwegian emergency departments.

BACKGROUND An increasing number of patients and stricter requirements for quality and efficiency in the management of emergency patients have spurred several Norwegian emergency departments (EDs) to introduce triage as one of several measures. This introduction has taken place without any accompanying research. We therefore wanted to investigate the use and organisation of triage, as well as th...

Characterizing emergency departments to improve understanding of emergency care systems

International emergency medicine aims to understand different systems of emergency care across the globe. To date, however, international emergency medicine lacks common descriptors that can encompass the wide variety of emergency care systems in different countries. The frequent use of general, system-wide indicators (e.g. the status of emergency medicine as a medical specialty or the presence...