Waiting to Be Seen: Where EM Policy Meets Practice is a new EM Cases blog series, authored by Dr. Howard Ovens, a veteran Emergency Department Director, whose main purpose is to share ideas and generate discussion on the role that public policy and administrative practices play in creating the conditions that help front line emergency providers achieve better patient outcomes.
As both an emergency director and a practising emergency physician, I believe it is the job of administrators to make the challenges of front line staff easier, not vice-versa. Clinicians are too busy taking care of patients to perform purely administrative chores. But one task that I would ask all emergency doctors to adopt is the step of recording the time of Physician Initial Assessment, or PIA times. The time from arrival until they first see a physician is what most patients consider their ED wait time, and it is an important metric to report. Yes, it means one more small box to fill out in your charting, but it can be of huge benefit to doctors. Allow me to explain why....