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Improving care and efficiency: Appointment times in a haemodialysis unit
Author(s) -
Lunts P.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
edtna‐erca journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.381
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1755-6686
pISSN - 1019-083X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-6686.2002.tb00188.x
Subject(s) - economic shortage , unit (ring theory) , dialysis , key (lock) , nursing , medical emergency , medicine , operations management , patient care , field (mathematics) , business , simple (philosophy) , intensive care medicine , psychology , computer science , engineering , computer security , surgery , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics education , mathematics , epistemology , government (linguistics) , pure mathematics
Summary Shortage of nurses and dialysis spaces and the desire to improve patient care are the two main driving forces in the dialysis field today. This paper suggests that these issues can be addressed by organisational change. We describe a simple, dramatically effective but rarely used example — the effect on a haemodialysis unit of the introduction of patient appointment times. This paper will demonstrate that appointment times can be highly effective in reducing waiting times for patients and in utilizing staff and resources more efficiently, as long as there is commitment from key staff to implement and maintain them effectively.