Your Safety - Our Priority

On the occasion of the Emergency Medicine Day that will take place on 27 May, we want to discuss and draw the attention of the media and politicians to the question of safety and quality in hospital emergency departments (EDs).
We therefore would like to invite you to respond to the following 40 questions, based on a validated survey, about the safety of emergency care in your ED.
This will take about 10 minutes of your time, but we strongly believe it is of the utmost importance that we can provide concrete data to the relevant stakeholders to reflect our distress and how this can threaten our safety and that of our patients.
In parallel to this survey we are sending a questionnaire to patients’ organisation and to individual patients, with the hope that the results of the three surveys will describe the situation in an unequivocal way.  
The results of these surveys will be published on the EM day and will be circulated to media and politicians.

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* 1. How many years of experience do you have in the ED?

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* 2. There is an open, non-judgemental environment for reporting safety concerns.

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* 3. New nurses are well mentored by nurses with more experience

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* 4. ED leadership takes action to improve safety of clinical care for patients

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* 5. Protocols are used for high risk or complex medication administration (ex: sedation, thrombolytic, blood etc)

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* 6. Junior or unexperienced doctors are adequately supervised in the ED

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* 7. It is easy to find the professionals caring for a specific patient

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* 8. ED leadership takes action to grant infection control in the ED

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* 9. Mental health patients are cared for in a safe environment

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* 10. Monitoring devices function in the ED

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* 11. There is sufficient space for delivering care

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* 12. ED personnel feel physically safe while working

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* 13. There are enough PPE supplies to protect professionals

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* 14. Medical staffing is sufficient to handle patient load during busy periods

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* 15. CT scans are completed within 1 hour when clinically indicated

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* 16. ED staff feels pressurized by external targets over patient care

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* 17. Effective systems are in place to highlight patient alerts (eg. Allergies, risk of falling…)to ED staff

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* 18. Hospital managers support improvements in patient safety in the ED

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* 19. Hospital procedures are effective at improving flow in the ED

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* 20. I am less effective at work because of fatigue and burnout

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* 21. I am proud to work in Emergency Medicine

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* 22. Initial assessment/triage works well in my department

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* 23. It is difficult to gain access to patient’s hospital medical records when needed

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* 24. It is difficult to gain access to patient’s primary care records when needed

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* 25. Monitoring of vital signs/Early Warning Scores are used effectively

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* 26. Morale in my ED is high

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* 27. Nurse staffing is sufficient to handle patient load during busy periods

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* 28. Patients are transferred to a hospital bed in timely manner  (no crowding due to boarding)

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* 29. Procedures to report errors and near misses are user friendly

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* 30. The number of patients cared for exceeds the capacity of the ED to provide safe care

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* 31. There is an adequate number of functioning computers in the ED

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* 32. This is a good place to work.

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* 33. Working in my ED is like being part of a large family

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* 34. Interruptions disrupt the ability of staff to provide care

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* 35. Doctors and nurses work well together in the ED

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* 36. Important clinical information is lost in handovers at the change of shift

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* 37. There is good communication of patient management between doctors and nurses

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* 38. Professional details

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* 39. If we may contact you to ask for an interview or a quote, please leave your email address here.

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* 40. If you like to share any comments about the patient and professional safety with us, please put them here.

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