Abstract
Throughout the world there are so-called cardiac arrest teams (CAT) for in-hospital emergency care. In addition medical emergency teams (MET) are integrated for the prevention of in-hospital emergency situations. The present investigation investigated the structure of emergency care in Dutch hospitals. The investigation was performed using structured interviews (mixed methods design). The survey ...
Abstract
Throughout the world there are so-called cardiac arrest teams (CAT) for in-hospital emergency care. In addition medical emergency teams (MET) are integrated for the prevention of in-hospital emergency situations. The present investigation investigated the structure of emergency care in Dutch hospitals. The investigation was performed using structured interviews (mixed methods design). The survey covered the structure of in-hospital emergency care as well as the training of the CAT members. A total of 9 university hospitals (group 1), 9 secondary care hospitals (group 2) and 9 primary care hospitals (group 3) were included in the investigation. A total of 25 physicians agreed to be interviewed (93%) of which 21 were included in the present investigation (78%). Regardless of the level of care, all examined hospitals had at least one CAT and 4 of the 21 hospitals had, in addition, a MET for the prevention of in-hospital emergencies (19%). With respect to the in-hospital emergency night time medical care and the skills of the staff, there were differences between the examined hospitals. In all hospitals there was a structured emergency care by special emergency teams. The in-hospital emergency prevention by MET needs improvement. A possibility to improve the emergency care of hospitalized patients is to train the staff on normal wards.
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