Wait Time In Hospital

According to a 2010 Commonwealth survey conducted by the Health Council of Canada, 39 percent of Canadians waited two hours or more in the emergency room, as against 31 percent in the U.S. 43 percent waited four weeks or more to see a specialist, as against 10 percent in the U.S. The same survey reveals that the median wait time to see a special physician is a little over four weeks with 86.4 percent waiting less than 3 months (Health Canada, 2006). The implication of this is that patients would have to wait longer before they could get care. Personal experiences in 2016 further reveal that wait times in emergency department is still a persistent problem in the Emergency Departments across Canadian hospitals. This paper will explore wait times in the Emergency Department in Canadian hospitals. Within the scope of this paper, the factors contributing to the wait times in EDs will be examined as well as investigating the effects of wait times on the clients and medical professionals working in this unit of the hospitals. Lastly, measures that will help to address wait times in ED will be recommended. It will be argued that wait times in Emergency Department erode the culture of quality care ED has been known for.
Emergency Departments are very crucial parts of the healthcare system because …show more content…
Many patients who occupy beds at emergency departments are those who are patiently waiting for bed in other departments of the hospitals. As long as the healthcare system does not provide enough beds in other departments to the full capacity of the patients they receive, Emergency Departments will continue to experience the same problem of overcrowding (Schull, Slaughter and Redelmeier,