'I knew I'd be taken care of': Exploring patient experiences in the Emergency Department.
Claudia Bull, Sharon Latimer, Julia Crilly and 2 others
PMID 35719017WHAT IT FOUND
Emergency Department patients described feeling cared for when staff used their name, explained wait times and results, treated pain promptly, protected privacy, and included companions.
These accounts guide nursing care and future experience surveys.
Key findings
01Patients felt cared for when staff treated them as a person, showed empathy, knew their name, and respected what they knew about their own body.
02Information about wait times, tests, results, and discharge plans made patients feel included and less anxious, while limited information left some feeling like passive recipients.
03Prompt pain relief and having a companion present were important parts of the experience; lack of analgesia made patients feel dismissed, and absence of a companion could mean no one heard discharge advice.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Patients were interviewed 1 to 14 days after their Emergency Department visit, so recall bias is possible. All interviews were conducted by phone, so the researcher could not use non-verbal visual cues to prompt further questioning. Emergency Department staff approached patients for consent, so selection bias may have affected who participated. People needing a translator, triaged as category 1, presenting for mental health, escorted by police or correctional services, suspected of having COVID-19, or unable to be interviewed within 2 weeks were excluded. The study was done in two public Emergency Departments in Southeast Queensland and aimed to inform a future patient-reported experience measure, so the themes are not generalisable to all Australian Emergency Departments.
Declared interests
The paper states that the research received no specific grant from any funding agency. No conflict-of-interest declaration is provided in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these patient accounts prove a particular Emergency Department communication or pain-relief practice will improve outcomes. The study interviewed 30 patients to identify concepts for a future patient-reported experience measure, and it did not test any intervention.