Children’s experience of emergency care as a measure of quality #WILTW

This is the 101st #WILTW

This week I attended the International conference of Emergency Medicine Conference (#ICEM2016) in Cape Town. I was lucky enough to have been asked to present on a few topics, one of which was  defining ‘quality’ in Children’s Emergency Care. Having discussed the 6 domains of quality previously I won’t revisit that aspect of the talk.

Quality Matrix
US Institute for Healthcare Improvement

While there is a great deal of literature on Quality and Improvement there isn’t much specifically on the care of Children in emergency settings. A determined researcher, Eveline Allesandrini, has produced a very useful toolkit for health care professionals who work in Children’s Emergency Care. One of things that is perhaps missing from the framework is the Child’s or Young Person’s experience (only Parent/Carer satisfaction is part of the Patient-centered performance measure)

I would argue that experience is important and to this end have collected a selection of children describing experiences relevant to Emergency or Urgent care setting. A big thanks to those who contributed (both to the parents and children themselves). While there are somethings we can’t change (you may have to have a blood test) and there are somethings that can’t be avoided (when we are very busy you may wait a long time to be seen) we can work hard to make sure a Child or Young Persons experience is as good as it possibly can be.

Please do watch (with the sound on!)

If the video link doesn’t work please click here

What have you learnt this week #WILTW

You can now follow WILTW on Facebook by liking this page . Browse previous posts here or insert your e-mail address in the box on the right hand side to receive future posts. 

 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.