This evaluation intrigued me as I recently broke my right
arm and became very familiar with Royal University Hospital’s emergency
room. Without going into too much detail
my experience was not a positive one.
Therefore, I was determined to discover the literature I have read in
the newspaper explaining reports outlining evaluations done on Saskatoon hospitals
and their lengthy wait times.
The report would be classified as a goal-based evaluation as
it is identifying the problems previously discovered for our city’s hospital
emergency rooms. The evaluation was
thoroughly laid out by first discussing some of the issues facing the hospitals
that lead to the need for an evaluation.
It continues by explaining the issues faced by the hospital, which has contributed to increased wait times. Therefore,
anyone reading the evaluation is well informed on the current issues and the
key focus of the report. The report also
identifies the goals previously set out by the Saskatoon Health Region and how
they are struggling to achieve these goals by their projected time frame of March
2017.
The evaluation continues to explain current figures
and statistics on patient volume and current triage practices. What I found very beneficial is that the
evaluation clearly identifies four major boundaries to patient care and how
these inefficiencies are preventing future progress. The major issues are identified as: lack of
alternate care, use of emergency for specialist consultation, lack of beds
available for urgent care, and physical layout of the emergency rooms. Each section identifies and explains the
problem and recommends that the Saskatoon Health Region prepare an action plan,
which had not been done at the time of this report.
Another strength of this report is that it proceeds to make
conclusions, based off of the data collected, on how the ER’s can make some
improvements. It clearly lays out what
the specific problems are, within each category listed above, and how these
issues are contributing to the larger problem.
The key suggestions for focus were: give better directions to emergency
patients, follow practices more closely on how to identify triage patients and their urgency
for care, and periodically review waiting patients for comfort and
health deterioration. Overall, the evaluation is very thorough on identifying the
problems and making some suggestions on how these problems can be overcome.
It was difficult to identify any major weakness in the
report other than suggestions for improvement were not available. The report seemed as though it was giving
suggestions for improvement in some areas but when problems became more
deep-rooted the problem was only identified and not given solutions.
I don’t really want to suggest this is a weakness as an evaluation’s
purpose is not to solve any problems but simply identify and report on the
findings. It just became confusing for the reader once some suggestions to
solutions became evident.
By laying out these goals for the SHR it will hopefully help
them to focus in on their major issues in Saskatoon hospitals. The report
clearly laid out several facts and figures collected over a period of one year
that suggests the need for change. It
now becomes the goal of the SHR to make solutions to address these problems in
the timeline previously set out by them in the past. This is classic goal-based evaluation that
serves the purpose of reviewing staff performance and if objectives and goals
are on target to be achieved in a specific amount of time.
