Staff Education to reduce overcrowding in the Emergency Department.
Staff Education to reduce overcrowding in the Emergency Department.
Staff Education to reduce overcrowding in the Emergency Department (ED)
All employees want to feel valued and supported in their field, which is the same for the nurses. Additional education and training are essential to help nurses grow in their obligations within the institutions that, in the end, realize job satisfaction and enhance the commitment to the job they do. Moreover, education and training to the nursing staff are important to improve their knowledge and skills to facilitate efficient care delivery. With the increasing technology and the outbreak of the different disease conditions, the staff nurses must be continually updated through training programs to improve their knowledge and skills of the nurses to help them tackle the different conditions within the healthcare environment. For instance, the coronavirus pandemic that has currently hit the world has posed a serious challenge to the medical providers across the globe. Even though series of researches have been done to realize the effective vaccine for the virus, there have been series of education on the nurses to help contain the virus from spreading and claiming more lives, a great example of the reason the nursing staff should consistently get an education on the medical provision.
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Worst still, overcrowding at the emergency department (ED) is a serious concern for the nursing staff and has significantly compromise how they deliver medical services. The current coronavirus pandemic has even placed the lives of the individuals in the ED at risk since one of the primary precautions is to maintain the social distance that can be difficult to achieve when there is overcrowding. Also, the long wait hours at the ED has resulted in high mortalities due to negligence, and the staff nurses not having the needed knowledge to handle the large numbers in the ED. The impact is enhanced pressure on the staff nurses to get the needed training to ensure that such mortalities and risks that the other individuals get exposed to due to contact and the long wait hours are reduced. It is, therefore, mandatory that the nursing staff get equipped with the needed knowledge to help ease patient flow in the ED to help save lives and deliver quality care services. Also, continuous education will help the providers to get equipped with the needed skills and the knowledge that will help them confront the arising issues in the medical field.
Problem Statement
Over their careers, the nurses always attempt to provide excellent care and make a meaningful difference in others’ lives. Yet, the same nurses have also been faced with challenges where they face high mortalities, especially in the ED due to failure to attend to the patients in the critical conditions in time, some leaving the ED without being seen after long wait hours while some parents leave with their kids upon discharge without receiving any significant counselling due to lack of time. All these problems arise from poor patient flow in the ED and failure to establish the needed educational programs for the that the nursing staff should be put to address the issues (Herron, 2017). Some nursing staff areis young individuals who have recently graduated and have not been in the field for a long time to apply the needed strategies to ease the patient flow. Also, most medical facilities have not implemented the right programs to help the young staff on what needs to be done to help with the flow in the ED. At the same time, some of the organizations have also attempted to use programs that have entirely failed in the end.
The enhancement of patient flow is a worthwhile pursuit for staff nurses. However, the pursuit may seem completely unachievable, with limited financial resources and leadership opportunities. There is a need to establish nursing educational programs that will help in the establishment of strategies to help improve the flow in the ED. The nursing staff has significant roles to play in ensuring that the overcrowding and the wait time in the ED are minimized to help reduce the dangers such as high mortalities that are associated with the poor flow (Johnson & Winkelman, 2011). Moreover, the strategies establish within the medical centers should reflect what the nurses have learned in practice. The educational programs should have a primary focus on the changes that will enhance efficiency and the optimization of the resources. Also, the nursing staff should be made ready to be able to handle the rising cases of pandemics in the world. While coming up with the educational programs, the safety of the nurses should also be a primary focus.
In the past, numerous methods have been used by staff nurses to help ease patient flow. One of the primary strategies that have been in use in the ED is to reduce bed holds. The staff nurses are always encouraged to keep a bed or two at all times for emergencies, a concept called “bed holding.” Even though this practice has been practical in numerous instances, it also comes with certain challenges. It can result in more patients leaving the ED without getting attended to, or seen or cause long delays in care, which enhances poor patient flow.
Furthermore, even the placement of the patients in the ED beds by the staff nurses can result in longer wait hours and additional time in the waiting rooms over the day. For the ED staff nurses, the limitation of the amount of time the ED beds are held and enhancing the general flow of the patients in the department can be ensured by making certain integral changes that may include filling the beds despite the wait times of the physicians (Chan, & Stackhouse, 2014). Even though the method implies that the patients may not be seen right away, they would be accessible to the physicians right away once they are ready. The placement also ensures that the staff can monitor the patients and offer time to prepare for the assessments.
The second practice that has been put in place to ensure the staff nurses ease the patient flow in the ED is to provide educational materials with efficient and timely discharge teaching. The poor communication in signaling the end of the visit and answering the questions has been one of the primary drawbacks to the staff nurses ensuring a good flow of patients in the ED. Poor communication has created a dilemma where the patients in the ED do not know when to leave. However, with the educational guide, the staff nurse can effectively access information that will help ensure that they learn about the patients who need assistance with the dressing, mobility aide, or those who require phones before they get discharged. Having the staff nurse in place to aid in completing such tasks can help enhance the flow. However, this can only help with sufficient information and guidance to help the staff nurses step up to complete these tasks to enhance patient flow in the ED.
Purpose Statement
This proposal aims to establish the most effective educational program for staff nurses to improve patient flow in the emergency department. The issue of the poor flow in the emergency departments has been associated with the lack of education for the staff nurses. The fact that different hospitals have different operational cultures should mean that the staff nurses coming in should be put into programs that will acquaint them with the processes and practices at their new workplaces. The research will aim to establish which measures and a staff teaching program s that the nurses should be able to applyput to ensure that they familiarize themselves with the existing culture. Also, the familiarization can get enhanced through their interaction with their co-workers. However, this is not enough as the co-workers should also get updated due to the rising pandemics in the world full of uncertainties and requiring new strategies to help combat them from spreading and affecting new numerous individuals.
This research proposes the use ( I am unclear. Is this your proposal within the newly developed staff education program? Are there any references that could be added to support the idea?) of steering committees who are charged with facilitating the ED change and recommends the inclusion of the nursing staff. The nurses should jump at the chance to sit with the committees so that they are educated on the identification of the changes that may occur in the ED. The nurses within the committees will also learn how any change will impact the nurses, enabling them to advocate for enhancements in patients flow from the perspective of the nurses. Ideally, upon the conceptualization of the changes and obtaining the staff teaching from the committees, the staff nurses should get educated based on the streaming process. The process will involve grouping or teaming up the nurses based on a given discipline or disease suffered by a particular group of people. Every group will be assigned an educator that helps update them on the various changes in disease conditions and the measures they need to have in place to handle the conditions within the shortest time possible. The approach will further have facilitated by the pivot nurses at the ED who asks about the patient’s condition and give appropriate directions to different groups of staff nurses based on the condition of the patient.
Research Objectives
To establish the most effective educational program that will help the staff nurses ease patient flow at the ED.
To establish the effectiveness of the streaming process in reducing overcrowding under the help of pivot nurses. (Do you plan on implementing your teaching strategy and measure actual outcomes of crowding? )
Staff Education to reduce overcrowding in the Emergency Department.
Staff Education to reduce overcrowding in the Emergency Department.
Practice Focused Question (s)
Does stay in the loop on ED changes by the staff nurses improve flow in the ED? How effective is the inclusion of the staff nurses in the steering committees charged with the ED change-facilitation to help reduce overcrowding in ED?
Does the allocation of similar patients to given work stream help improve flow in the ED? (Are you measuring this for this study?)