gms | German Medical Science

Objectives/Interrogation: Emergency departments are constantly experiencing high patient load, and their physicians under high pressure for proper disposition of their patients. We noticed that a significant proportion of admissions to the inpatient ward may be avoided, when the definitive management by the relevant specialty could be carried out in the outpatient setting, and in a timely fashion. This has positive effects on delivery of patient care and on healthcare cost.

Hand Hot clinic has been introduced in our institution to provide quick access to speciality service, improve Hand emergency care, and to reduce burden on the emergency department.

Our objective is to find out patients' experience, to evaluate and improve delivery of Hand Hot Clinic care.

Methods: Hand Hot clinic is intended to reduce the admissions of patients with acute hand problems. Patients will be assessed by the hand surgery team, who will institute initial management and draw up a definitive plan.

A questionnaire was specifically designed to explore patients perspectives and experience. All the patients were triaged by the nurse on arrival, followed by review and management by the Hand team doctor on duty.

Patients were then asked to fill in the questionnaire before leaving the clinic. All data were anonymised and no patient identifiable data was used in the study.

Results and Conclusions: The initial results are encouraging. Patients as well as the Emergency Department physicians are happy that their immediate concerns get addressed promptly.

Deeper analysis will be presented.