CHALLENGE
Many patients experience hospitals as impersonal and alienating. In the future, hospitals will lack staff, which can exacerbate what patients experience.

Visiting accident and emergency units can imply frustrating waits and lack of information. Southwest Jutland Hospital wanted to improve the waiting time situation for patients at Esbjerg Hospital’s emergency room.

FINDINGS
Emergency room patients do not know what the procedures are.

Patients do not know what the emergency room staff do, and the emergency room staff have limited insight into how the patients are while waiting.

The long wait in gloomy and depressing surroundings exacerbate patients’ general condition.

SOLUTION
The new emergency room at Esbjerg Hospital focuses on the patients and meets the needs of the patients. The new emergency room has pleasant, comfortable seating; there are different rooms where patients can wait; there is information about the procedures patients go through; in case of long waiting time, patients are free to leave the emergency room and get a text message about when they must return. Patients continually receive information about when it will be their turn. Implementation of the project is expected to be finished in the autumn of 2011.

Partners involved INVIA, The emergency room at Sydvestjysk Hospital, Esbjerg, Region of Southern Denmark, IDEO