N.S. announces slate of changes to improve emergency departments – CBC
More nurse practitioners and patient advocates will be added to ERs
Jan 18, 2023
The Nova Scotia government has announced a long list of changes it hopes will improve care at emergency departments, including ways to ensure patients with the most urgent needs get help first, improving ambulance response times and offering more places for people to receive care.
Karen Oldfield, the president and CEO of Nova Scotia Health, said in a news release Wednesday that the health-care system “was built during a different era, and aside from technological advances, it has barely changed since. That is not our future. No one person can move this mountain by themselves. We can do it if we all pull together with a common goal: a system that is ready, responsive and reliable.”
In order to get speedier care in urgent cases, the government plans to deploy teams led by doctors to triage patients and get them out of ambulances and into ERs faster.
Physician assistants and nurse practitioners will be assigned to provide care in emergency departments, and more nurse practitioners will be added to emergency rooms. The province says physician assistants, under the supervision of a doctor, can care for up to 62 per cent of all patients in emergency departments.
Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/emergency-department-changes-announcement-1.6716782
