Abstract
Overcrowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) is well recognised.
To help ease this in our institution a Surgical Assessment Unit (SAU)
allows for patients to be referred directly from the Primary Care and
other sources for assessment directly by senior surgical staff. We
sought to compare patients experiences in this unit with those surgical patients who are assessed in ED.
A Patient Satisfaction Scoring questionnaire was distributed to 115
consecutive surgical patients attending the SAU and ED over an
8 week period. Patients impressions of waiting times, pain management and interactions with staff were detailed. The actual times
taken for assessment, admission and discharge were recorded and
compared with those perceived by the patients.
The Surgical Assessment Unit is highly effective in the prompt
assessment of surgical patients and those patients are extremely satisfied with the service. Despite longer waiting times surgical patients
seen in the Emergency Department were predominantly satisfied with
their time spent there.
Conflict of interest: None.
Disclosures: None.
| Original language | English (Ireland) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Sylvester OHalloran Meeting 2011 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2011 |
Authors (Note for portal: view the doc link for the full list of authors)
- Authors
- Forrestal, B; Coyle, P; Hynes, T; Moloney, MC; Kavanagh, EG; Burke, PE; Walsh, SR; Grace, PA.