This sounds like a return to the bad old days. We used to do this when I was a
junior SHO in the early nineties. Hardly seems the correct image to have a
locked door on an A&E department. All it needs is one patient to drop dead
outside whilst searching for the doorbell and you hit the papers!
Andy
Conflict of interest - my parents live just down the road from your unit and I
would not like them to be propped outside waiting for someone to shout through
an intercom at them!
>===== Original Message From Accident and Emergency Academic List
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>Our local PCT wants us to explore locking the doors to the A/E Department to
stop patients from coming in with conditions that they think (local gp's) do
not need to be seen. There would be a telephone outside and the patient could
thus be triaged form inside without any face to face contact. This seems a
radical way of dealing with the 4 hour wait but perhaps not without some
disadvantage for the patient.
>Does anyone on the list work in a department which has locked doors. Does
this cut down the waiting time for those that do get in ? How do those turned
away feel?
>
>JP
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