activity and funding of nurses in an emergency department

Abstract

The financing of the hospital nursing staff working in emergency departments has been recently modified in Belgium. New rules take into account the annual number of visits in the emergency departments and additional points based on criteria increasing nursing activities. This study aims to identify factors influencing the activity of nurses in an emergency department and try to analyze if financing criteria chosen by the health ministry reflect or not the activity of nurses. Nursing procedures given to 689 patients who attended the emergency department of a general hospital of 419 beds have been recorded. The time of nursing care per patient is 18.57 minutes on average. The activity can be highly variable from one patient to another. An hospitalization after the emergency visit gives a higher probability to be a higher consumer of nursing care in the emergency department. Nursing care varies with medical diagnosis. However, there is high variability of consumption of care within the same diagnosis. Results of this study do not suggest that criteria chosen for emergency departments funding are correlated with the activity of the nursing staff.