According to the French National Authority for Health (HAS), emergency services are“hospital services that provide care for unscheduled visits to a public or private healthcare facility, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, for anyone, regardless of their circumstances, who presents in an emergency situation, including psychiatric emergencies”*.
These services are one of the main points of entry into the healthcare system; moreover, the number of visits to these facilities is constantly increasing. For example, in 2017, in metropolitan France and the French overseas departments and regions (DROM), 713 emergency departments located in 637 healthcare facilities handled 21.4 million visits.*
During the health crisis, emergency departments also played a crucial role in managing COVID-19 cases, both in terms of screening and treatment.
To ensure prompt care for medically urgent or unstable patients and to improve the reliability of care in emergency departments, strategies must be implemented to effectively meet patients' needs during crises or health emergencies.
The Emergency Department Nurse (IDA), responsible for ensuring the safe reception of patients in the emergency department
The Emergency Department Nurse (IDA), formerly known as the Reception Nurse, is one of the first healthcare professionals to take charge of a patient arriving at the emergency department.
According to the French National Agency for Healthcare and Social Care Performance (ANAP), the triage nurse plays a key role in ensuring the quality of care.
According to the French Society of Emergency Medicine (SFMU), the primary mission of the triage nurse is“to provide a personalized welcome to patients and their companions upon arrival, determine care priorities based on expressed and/or observed needs, and, based on these needs, decide on the appropriate care setting. These actions aim to improve the quality of care for patients and their companions from the moment of arrival. They are carried out in constant contact with the attending physician responsible for supervising the department’s operations and managing patient flow.”
To this end, it is recommended that Emergency Department Instructors (EDIs) adopt best practices to understand the key aspects of patient identification safety, to be able to assess a patient’s clinical condition and refer them appropriately, and to ensure secure communication among healthcare professionals.
Accurate patient identification is indeed the first step in a process that continues throughout their care by the various healthcare professionals involved. This is why, from the moment a patient arrives at the emergency department, it is essential to implement robust identification practices to ensure the secure sharing of health information and to guarantee patient safety. To learn more about best practices in patient identification, see our article.
One of the functions of the emergency department is to quickly identify patients requiring urgent care. Triage is a practice that has been used for years in war and disaster medicine. It involves efficiently directing a patient to a care area suited to their needs, ranging from discharge home to intensive care. Triage of patients presenting to the emergency department is necessary when the volume of patients exceeds the capacity for immediate care, except in life-threatening emergencies. This triage must begin as soon as patients arrive at the emergency department to ensure the safety of patient care, which is organized according to the severity of their condition and not according to their order of arrival at the emergency reception area. The Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) is responsible for assessing the urgency of the patients' condition. They provide initial care as needed and direct patients to an examination room or the waiting room appropriate to their condition. To be able to assess a patient’s clinical condition and direct them appropriately, especially when patient flow is high, it is recommended to use assessment scales that can identify priority patients based on their health status while reducing initial waiting times. Several such scales exist and are worth considering. Let’s take the example of the “Emergency Severity Index” scale.
Another key role of the IOA in ensuring the reliability of care involves securing data transmissions between caregivers.
Handoffs refer to all the methods used to share information among members of a healthcare team to ensure continuity of care. This involves facilitating the exchange of information and acting as an intermediary. To learn more about handoffs between healthcare professionals, see our article.
SafeTeam Academy and Patient Reception in the Emergency Department
Applying best practices when receiving a patient in the emergency department is a critical step in ensuring safe care throughout the rest of the treatment process.
To support healthcare professionals in this process, the SafeTeam Academy has developed a module dedicated to welcoming patients to the emergency department. Through an immersive video, healthcare professionals are placed in an emergency department to manage a patient presenting with a respiratory emergency. In this module, healthcare professionals explore several key areas: the procedures to follow, the application of non-technical skills for accurate patient identification and monitoring, information gathering, and assessing the urgency of the medical evaluation. If you too would like to help improve the quality of care at your facility, SafeTeam Academy training courses are for you! For more information, please contact us at: contact@safeteam.academy
