Emergency department
An emergency department, also known as an emergency and emergency department, emergency room, or emergency department is a healthcare facility specializing in emergency medicine, the critical care of patients who first arrive on foot, either by their means or by ambulance. The emergency department is usually located in a hospital or other primary care facility. Due to the uncertain nature of the service, medical care for a wide cross-section of conditions and injuries must always be available through initial emergency treatment. This can occasionally be life-threatening, requiring same-day treatment, and indeed, in many countries now, the accident and emergency department is often a major primary entry point into healthcare for
certain sections of society with no alternatives. Emergency departments in most hospitals operate 24 hours a day, although staffing levels may vary to try to reflect patient volume.
In the present day, an average hospital has an emergency department on the first floor of the building with a different entrance. As patients can present at any time and with any complaint, one of the essentials of the functioning of an emergency department is triaging or the prioritization of cases according to clinical need.
Cases treated
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest refers to the sudden loss of cardiac function breathing and consciousness. It is usually caused by an electrical disturbance in the heart cutting off blood flow to other parts of the body. The blood supply to part of the heart is blocked. Cardiac arrest can occur or patients may be transported by ambulance to the emergency department already in this condition. Treatment involves basic life support, the use of an automated external defibrillator, and advanced life support that is trained in Advanced Life Support and Advanced Cardiac Life Support courses.
Heart Attack
Patients arriving at the emergency room due to a heart attack are mostly sent to the resuscitation area. They get oxygen and monitoring and receive an early EKG. Aspirin will be given if not contraindicated or has not already been given by the ambulance crew. Morphine or diamorphine will be given under the tongue or in the mouth for pain. it will be given unless contraindicated by the presence of medications. ECG showing ST segment elevation indicates total occlusion of one of the main coronary arteries. These Patients need to have the closed vessel reperfused. This can be achieved through two ways thrombolysis, blood clotting drugs, or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty.
Mental illness
Some patients report to the emergency room with a complaint of mental illness. In many jurisdictions, including various states within the United States of America, a patient found to appear mentally ill and posing any risk to himself or even others can be taken compulsorily to the emergency department by law enforcement for psychiatric review. Acute conduct disorders often get medically evaluated more than treated in the emergency room. From the emergency room, patients with serious mental illness are often transferred to psychiatric units involuntarily. In recent years, EmPATH units have been developed to ease the pressure on hospital emergency departments and improve the treatment of psychiatric emergencies.
Facilities, training, and special equipment
An emergency department requires different equipment and approaches from most other hospital departments. Patients come in with unstable conditions, and therefore the treatment should be done within the shortest time possible. They could be unconscious, and therefore, the history of their diseases, allergies, and blood types may not be known. Emergency people are trained to work in the shortest time possible using minimal information.
Emergency personnel also need to communicate effectively with prehospital care providers, including EMTs, paramedics, and other providers who are sometimes based in the emergency department. Prehospital care providers often use equipment that is unusual for most physicians, yet emergency department physicians must know how to use specialized equipment because military shock pants and traction belts require special techniques. Other reasons apart, they can now specialize in emergency medicine because they have to handle specialized equipment indeed, many such specialists are employed in emergency departments.
Emergency services personnel have much in common with ambulance and fire crews, combat medics, search and rescue teams, and disaster response teams. Coordination of this complex response system is often improved by joint training and practical exercises. Busy emergency departments trade a lot of equipment with ambulance crews, and both should plan to replace, return, or refund expensive items.
Cardiac arrest and significant trauma are very common in emergency departments. Thus, defibrillators, automatic ventilation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation devices, and anti-hemorrhagic gowns have become common. With respect to these conditions, shortening the waiting time to large interventions improves survival much better. During the past several years, some of the specialized equipment has even spread into prehospital use. The most widely recognized would be the case of defibrillators, which started by penetrating in ambulances, later to an automatic version into police and fire engines and, recently, to public spaces as airports, offices, hotels, and even shopping malls.
Overcrowding
The overcrowding in emergency departments occurs when the operation of a department is impeded by an inability to manage all the patients properly. This happens commonly in every emergency department around the globe. Overcrowding results in inadequate care, which means poor patient outcomes. Emergency departments use escalation policies when faced with increased demand or reduced capacity. The purpose of the policies is to maintain the ability to care for patients without compromising safety or deviating from normal processes.
Emergency Department Waiting Times
Emergency department waiting times significantly affect patient mortality, readmission morbidity within 30 days, length of stay, and patient satisfaction. The likelihood of death increases by 1% for every 3 minutes in cases of severe abdominal injuries. The principle of rapid treatment with minimal transfer of patients from admission to radiological diagnosis is followed by emergency department staff. A review of the related literature confirms the logical principle of treatment for all illnesses and injuries. Since the outcome is time-sensitive, the sooner the treatments are provided, the better is the outcome.
Discharge Block
Many emergency department patients are treated and discharged, but many others require admission for observation, treatment, or to ensure that appropriate social care is available before discharge. If all of these patients cannot be accommodated in hospital beds promptly, either out-of-hospital or in-hospital congestion occurs. It is not unusual for overcrowding to result in overcrowding and the delay in treating new cases.
Telemedicine
A study found that telemedicine services in Saudi Arabia were able to alleviate emergency department overload through provision of medical advice to less severe medical conditions patients.