Hospitals
Overcrowded emergency departments lead to delays and insufficient treatment of patients with severe pain, according to a study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Researchers found that hospital staff working in crowded EDs could be less responsive to individual patients' symptoms, causing a greater likelihood of delays in treatment or no treatment at all. In addition, the authors noted that measuring the occupancy of an ED waiting room could effectively determine whether an ED is crowded.
The authors concluded that efforts to reduce crowding in EDs could improve the quality of pain management (Pines/Hollander, Annals of Emergency Medicine, January 2008).