CONTROVERSIES IN EMERGENCY CARE

¹ Director of Emergency Sevices, NHS Modernisation Agency, UK
² Department of Health, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Karen Castille, NHS Modernisation Agency, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS, UK;
karen.castille@tesco.net

Keywords: see and treat

The advantage of having senior clinicians seeing and dealing with patients at the earliest possible opportunity is virtually uncontested across a wide spectrum of healthcare services. The concept of See and Treat is entirely based on this premise, and it is therefore not surprising that it works. The benefits of See and Treat, as part of an emergency department system are clear:

• Significant reductions in both the time that each patient has to wait and the total number of patients waiting at any one time
  
• Improvement in both patient experience and staff job satisfaction (concerns about staff job satisfaction emanate from those who have not tried it, rather than those who have)
  

Leaman offers a good description of See and Treat. His criticism seems to be mostly confined to the reasons for its introduction. We have therefore focused our response on his five main points which, in summary, appear . . . [Full text of this article]

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• Lamont, S S. (2005). "See and Treat": spreading like wildfire? A qualitative study into factors affecting its introduction and spread. Emerg. Med. J. 22: 548-552 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
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