A Study on the Operations of the Emergency Department, With a Focus on the Amount of Time Allocated to Each Activity in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Emergency Department specializes in providing episodic & primary acute care to patients arriving at the ED. The study mainly focuses on the existing functioning of the emergency department in the hospital and assesses the time taken for the management of patients in the department. A pilot study was conducted to determine the feasibility of the study and to help with the process of standardization of various activities performed in the ED. The tools used for data collection were observation dairy and checklist and the methods of data collection were observation and discussion. The standard time for various specialties was found and it was compared with the actual time to rule out the deviation. The results showed that the Pulmonology specialty had the greatest deviation from the standard time, which was 1 hour 56 minutes and 35sec and the orthopedics specialty showed the least deviation which was 30 minutes and 55 sec. The major causes of deviation include: -32% of the samples showed delay due to the shortage of staff to transfer the patients to the concerned department and 26% of the samples were delayed due to the waiting time for investigations like MRI and CT scans. The study helped develop a whole new perspective on the ED and the care provided by the various departments for the patients visiting the ED.