COMMENTARY

Emergency department overcrowding

Sex, SARS, and the Holy Grail

M J Schull

Emergency Department, Sunnbrook and Women’s Hospital, G-106, 2076 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4N 3MS; mjs@ices.on.ca

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What each tells us about overcrowding

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Keywords: bioterrorism; emergency department overcrowding

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In this issue of the journal,¹ Fatovich and Hirsch report on the ambulance bypass experience of one hospital in Western Australia from 1999 to 2001. Like in other jurisdictions,^2–4 ambulance bypass has become more frequent reflecting worsening overcrowding in emergency departments (ED). Of particular interest are the insights of ED staff who recorded their perceptions of the main causes of overcrowding at the time an ambulance bypass was initiated. Not surprisingly, the great majority of bypass episodes resulted from excess patient volume, including too many new patients presenting in a short period of time for care, an inability to move admitted patients out of the ED to ward beds fast enough, or both. Other causes, including facility problems, staff shortages, an excess of high acuity patients, or external disasters were much less common.

For physicians working in most EDs in the UK, Canada, or the USA, the . . . [Full text of this article]

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