{"id":3023,"date":"2013-07-31T02:05:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T16:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=3023"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:35:44","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:35:44","slug":"emergency-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/emergency-wait\/","title":{"rendered":"Help us avoid 24-hour emergency waits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EMERGENCY<\/a>Recently, The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital (RCH) experienced a disappointing incident \u2013 a patient remained in the Emergency department for more than 24 hours.<\/p>\n

RCH Director of Emergency Medicine, Dr Ed Oakley, says a breach of this nature hasn\u2019t occurred for over a year and the hospital is taking the incident very seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen families arrive at Emergency they expect prompt care for their child.\u00a0 Despite the best efforts of staff, we can\u2019t always ensure patients are seen by a doctor or progress to a ward bed in a timely manner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not great care <\/a>from our perspective, and it\u2019s certainly not great care from the perspective of the patient and their family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Oakley says Emergency doesn\u2019t operate in isolation; the ability for Emergency to run effectively and efficiently also depends on the demands experienced by other areas of the hospital, including operating theatres, intensive care and wards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis incident has prompted us to review our processes right across the hospital to ensure no patient experiences a wait like this in future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret the RCH has been swamped with Emergency presentations since moving to its brand new building in late 2011.<\/p>\n

The total number of Emergency department presentations for the year 2012-13 was 6 per cent higher than in 2011-12 and 14 per cent higher than in 2010-11.\u00a0 This growth is significantly higher than the state average.<\/p>\n

In fact, Emergency presentations are at their highest level since August 2007, with 7,530 presentations\u00a0for the month of June this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past few weeks we have had days in which we\u2019ve seen more than 300 presentations.\u00a0 These levels are unprecedented for us,\u201d Dr Oakley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this means is that, unfortunately, it\u2019s not uncommon for patients needing admission to hospital to wait more than 18 hours to gain access to a hospital bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Dr Oakley points out that the community can help.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies can help us help our sickest patients by making the most of their local resources,” Dr Oakley said.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes we see families who drive past four or five hospitals with good emergency departments to come to the RCH, or bring their child to us rather than their GP.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about developing trust in GPs and local emergency departments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tell us what great care means to you.\u00a0 Visit our \u2018Great Care\u2019 campaign<\/a> on Facebook and help us shape our five year Strategic Plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, the RCH experienced a disappointing incident \u2013 a patient remained in the Emergency department for more than 24 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3023"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3061,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions\/3061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}