The Growing Challenge of Hospital Wait Times

There are too many very sad and frustrating stories of people having to wait too long to receive the proper care with some patient’s tragically not surviving.

Clearly our healthcare system is overwhelmed. Our doctors and nurses are doing the best they can with the limited resources we have. The government is finally spending money to build new, larger hospital facilities and train more healthcare professionals, unfortunately the government should have spotted the Baby Boomers Age Wave - twenty years ago and started preparing back then. These current efforts and spending announcements will take years to complete and cost $Billions of dollars.

The Untapped Resource: You

The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) is the scale that Emergency Departments and paramedics use to determine the degree of urgency or severity based on a patient's condition.  Triage is the French word meaning "to sort", so by triaging or sorting patients into the five levels shown on the CTAS Scale we can better prioritize the order in which patients are treated.  Most people know that a person with minor injuries or needs will have to wait until those people with immediate resuscitation needs or urgent needs will be treated first. Even if they will be getting their turn soon, if another critical patient arrives in the ED, the wait time gets pushed back longer. If we can expand our current healthcare capabilities or help reduce the number of visits or treat people sooner at the scene, we can reduce hospital wait times.  

Bystanders: The Untapped Resource for Faster First Aid

We must start enabling our enormous untapped resource called “Bystanders”. We need parents, grandparents, family members, friends, co-workers, club and association members to start first aid and help people before the 9-1-1 Emergency Services arrive or before the patient goes to the hospital.

Can you image if bystanders could start CPR, use an AED or even stop and reduce life threatening bleeding. Can you image if a bystander could administer an Epi-Pen® when someone was in anaphylaxis or assist with a reliever medication inhaler for an asthma attack or give Narcan for a suspected opioid overdose.

The Get Ready team has developed the Ready FIRSY AIDE™ web application that businesses and organizations can purchase for their staff or members, so people have life saving information right at their fingertips. Everyone can add Ready First Aide™ to their phone, so they always have the information with them.

The Impact of Bystanders on Hospital Efficiency

We need to help people Become a willing bystander™. Can you image if a person who suffered a cardiac arrest at work, was helped by co-workers and had a pulse and was breathing, or even conscious when the paramedics arrived!, the resuscitation and treatment efforts in the hospital would require less staff and resources, or if a person with the deadly bleed from a car crash had a family member or friend stop the bleeding and they only lost ½ a litre of blood instead of 2 litres of blood, the care and treatment efforts needed in the hospital would be a significantly less thus reducing the strain on the receiving hospital. If bystanders helped a lot of people with minor bleeds, or burns or choking, the patient might not even need to go to the hospital. Think of the impact we could have if some CTAS Level 1 or 2 people get some early treatment before EMS arrived or if very minor injuries could be treated at home we might reduce hospital visits by even 5% the impact would be wonderful.
 


Help us do our part by providing the information and giving people the confidence to treat people sooner and reduce injury severity and hospital ED visits. Let the medical teams focus on the patients that really need the appropriate intervention so we can hopefully stop these tragic events.

Order now for your staff or contact us to see how we can work together to create safer communities and support our community hospitals.

Resource:

This article is based on the following article: 

Ontario couple whose teenage son died after 8-hour wait in ER calls for law reform | CBC News | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-teen-death-1.7616220