Emergency physicians' perceptions predict certain emergency department performance measures, including patient flow indicators, according to a study in the Emergency Medicine Journal.
Emergency physicians at an ED in New South Wales in Australia completed shift reports on the number of patients in the ED, the number of patients in the ED with a length of stay higher than four hours, the number of admitted patients, the number of patients waiting to be seen by a physician and medical staffing levels. They also reported their perceptions of the ED shift on a scale of one to five, with one representing very poor and five representing very good.
From February to July 2012, the number of patients in the ED with a length of stay greater than four hours and the number of patients waiting to be seen were most strongly correlated with the shift perception score, according to the study. In addition, as the shift perception score increased, the average performance on the National Emergency Access Target (admitting or discharging patients from the ED within four hours) increased six percent.
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