A&E is often seen as a service in crisis and is the focus of much media and political interest. But A&E is just the tip of the iceberg – the whole urgent and emergency care system is complex, and surrounded by myth and confusion.
Our animation gives a whistle-stop tour of how the system fits together and busts some myths about what’s really going on – explaining that the underlying causes go much deeper than just A&E and demand a joined-up response across all services.
Comments
Human beings, our clients are diverse and as the animation showed, display complex and sometimes multifactorial reasons for A&E attendance.
This diversity and complexity requires more diverse workforce inclusion not just "Drs and Nurses" , echoing some of the comments above it is interesting to note the lack of acknowledgement of the role the Allied Health Professions can play, in the UK there are over 64000 AHPs who straddle the continuum of care for all ages groups,and a number are independent/ supplementary prescribers.
Working with social care and voluntary sector colleagues AHPs can collaboratively start to change the system response, especially around people who have higher disease burdens and lower levels of activation
which in turn can help "unplug" some of the bottlenecks being currently experienced.
And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
I applaud the work done in showing where the bottle necks are in the system and also possible solutions. But are we really honestly drilling down to the clear and present harsh reality: we just haven’t got enough resources/beds/staff in the system, etc, as the previous poster has written.
A study done and published in the BMJ in the recent past said of 11 or so high income countries we most cost effective in terms of heath care provision and also patient satisfaction. Imagine, therefore, how much more better we will be if we did put more money into the system?
So yes, we should have more joined up thinking and more inter-department communication and coordination, and yes that will help reduce admissions but i am reasonably and honestly sceptical it will make a significant difference till we bite the bullet and are honest with our self that we simply need more money and resource to cope with the inexorable tide. Yes i admit it may not solve our problem completely but it will go a very long way in that direction. It is from there we can progress to say we are being honest with our patients.
COI: best interests of our patients is my professional Raison d'être
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