As I have reported here before, our Unit has severe problems meeting certain triage target times, and I cannot believe we are alone. I would
like to ask how many people find them as unrealistic as I do, and whether we should start a debate to change them to times we have a
chance to meet.
For example, I have never known more than 45% of patients in category 2 seen by 10 minutes, and last month it was only 35% or so.
However, around 85% were seen within 30 minutes. So how much difference is that extra 20 minutes going to make in a target? The
standards are simply ignored now as they are far too stringent.
So how about some more realistic targets that we can try to achieve?
Category 1 100% 5 minutes.
Category 2 75% 20 minutes, 100% 30 minutes.
Category 3 75% 1 hour 100% 90 minutes.
Category 4 75% 90 minutes, 100% 150 minutes.
Category 5 NO target. It is illogical to set a target time for clients who should be somewhere else.
So in one of our busy months, June 1999, we could have met the target for category 1. We saw 84.3% of category 2 within 30 minutes,
94.8% of category 3 within 90 minutes, and 83% of category 4 within 90 minutes. With effort, I think we could meet all these targets.
Is there any evidence out there that a 10 minute extra delay is going to cost vast amounts of myocardium, say?
Best wishes,
Rowley Cottingham
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Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticise them, you're a mile away and you have
their shoes.
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