RESEARCH PROJECT FOCUSING ON CHEST PAIN ASSESSMENT
Participation in a state wide project has resulted in dramatically reduced waiting time in the Central Gippsland Health Service Emergency Department for people with chest pain.
The Health Service took part in the project, titled ‘Improving the assessment of chest pain in Emergency Departments,’ as part of a statewide Emergency Care Improvement and Innovation Clinical Network.
The CGHS project, which concentrated on ensuring better education for all Department staff and developing a new risk assessment tool, resulted in an average decrease of around 100 minutes in waiting time for chest pain patients. CGHS was one of 16 emergency departments from across the state to take part in the nine month project and its results were presented at a recent meeting of the Emergency Care Improvement and Innovation Clinical Network.
According to CGHS Emergency Department Nurse Unit Manager Louise Vuillermin, the end results of the project exceeded expectations.
“Just under 16,000 people a year present at the CGHS Emergency Department and of those about a third – more than 5,000 – are there because of some sort of chest pain,” Ms Vuillermin said.
“Many obviously require further treatment for cardiac issues, and there is a comprehensive and often time consuming process that each individual needs to undertake. As well as initial treatment, there is often a long period of observation.
“Prior to this project the average length of stay in the emergency department, as a result of chest pain, was close to seven hours. Following the project, the average has been reduced to 292 minutes, that is under five hours.”
Ms Vuillermin emphasised this was an average. “Clearly there are patients suffering from cardiac issues who require much more care, while other people have issues that are not as serious.
“The project has allowed us to better identify the level of risk to each patient and the most appropriate treatment, and therefore allocate resources most required by each patient. At the same time, this has decreased the average length of stay, freeing resources to enable treatment of those patients with more serious conditions.”
The project complemented another quality improvement project in the new Emergency Department, which aimed to improve waiting times and patient flow through the department. This project has seen a marked reduction in waiting times for all triage categories, in line with or better than Department of Health Requirements.
The Health Service will continue the program of ongoing education for all new nursing and medical staff and is intending to continue auditing the processes to ensure maintenance of high quality patient care and ongoing improvement.
“We have been really pleased with the improved skill base for ongoing project management, the improved documentation of patient education and discussion about risk factors and the most significant aspect is the reduced length of stay and more effective utilization of resources,” Ms Vuillermin said.
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