Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Comparative Study
Customer satisfaction in a large urban fire department emergency medical services system.
The purpose of this study was to determine if emergency medical services (EMS) customer satisfaction could be assessed using telephone-survey methods. The process by which customer satisfaction with the EMS service in a large, fire department-based EMS system is reported, and five month results are presented. ⋯ It is possible to conduct a survey of EMS customer satisfaction using telephone-survey methods. Although difficulties exist in contacting patients, useful information is made available with this method. Such surveys should be an integral part of any EMS system's quality-improvement efforts. In this survey, the overwhelming majority of patients, both transported and not transported, were satisfied with their encounter with EMS.
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Many people die in emergency departments (EDs) across the United States from sudden illnesses or injuries, an exacerbation of a chronic disease, or a terminal illness. Frequently, patients and families come to the ED seeking lifesaving or life-prolonging treatment. In addition, the ED is a place of transition-patients usually are transferred to an inpatient unit, transferred to another hospital, or discharged home. ⋯ However, these end-of-life care models are based on chronic disease trajectories and have difficulty accommodating sudden-death trajectories common in the ED. There is very little information about end-of-life care in the ED. This article explores ED culture and characteristics, and examines the applicability of current end-of-life care models.
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Comparative Study
Predictors of emergency department patient satisfaction: stability over 17 months.
The contradictory findings reported in the emergency department (ED) patient satisfaction literature may be due to methodologic differences between studies, as well as actual differences in predictors. The authors examined the stability of predictors of ED patient satisfaction across multiple assessments over 17 months. ⋯ Using p-value cut-offs as the sole criterion for interpreting which variables are most important in determining ED patient satisfaction is ill-advised, and may lead to spurious conclusions of discrepant findings. Nevertheless, some determinants of ED satisfaction likely differ meaningfully based on the cohort that is being examined. Overgeneralizing conclusions derived from a single ED patient satisfaction study should be avoided, especially those studies that are cross-sectional and use a single site.