----- Original Message -----
From: "Dunn Matthew Dr.
Subject: Re: Written consent for thrombolysis
> My worry and question concerns mainly time: trying to achieve a 20 minute
> door to needle time (of which 5 minutes is often taken up by parking the
> ambulance, offloading and moving the patient to a bed/ trolley) doesn't
> leave you with a lot of time.
Funny you should say that, Matt, of late I have become more concerned about
how we actually measure door-to-needle times, now we are being asked to
achieve such exacting targets. The "needle" bit is fairly easy to measure
but the "door" bit can be quite nebulous and difficult to measure, certainly
in any sort of standardised way between different units. However I recently
learned from the MINAP people, that they don't actually measure "door" time
as when the patient arrives. In fact, they measure the time the patient is
registered, which is handy, 'cause this occurs some 5 to 10 minutes after
they've come through the door! I thought this was a little devious, quite
apart from being prone to some manipulation, but they tell me that all units
are being measured this way, so any benefit should even out. Nevertheless I
agree, time is still a very precious commodity in these situations.
AF
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