Nurses Perception about factors leading to Emergency Departments Overcrowding in Governmental Hospitals of Gaza Strip

Emergency department (ED) crowding has been described in health emergency literature as a concern for more than 20 years, and it has become a modern international health delivery problem.

Objective

The overall aim of this study is to assess nurses' perception about factors may lead to ED overcrowding at governmental hospitals in Gaza Strip.

Methods

A quantitative cross-sectional descriptive design was used. The population of the study consisted of all nurses of both sexes with different qualifications working in emergency departments ‍at governmental hospitals in the Gaza Strip/Palestine. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 145 nurses which was developed by the researchers, out of which (82.85%) responded, data was analyzed by using the statistical package of social science version 23 using descriptive statistics, means, standard deviation one sample t-test, and independent t-test. The validity of the questionnaire was tested and the total instrument reliability test (Cronbach’s Alpha) gave a score of 0.902 and it is considered a high score.

Results

The results of the study showed that the highest percentage of participants was 60.7% for nurses aged less than 30 years and the majority of nurses who work in the ED are males (75.2%), and the nurses had bachelor (77,2%), associate degree comes in the second place with (18.6%) while (4.1%) had mastered. Also, most of them have experience years ranging from 1-5 years (55.2%). In addition, the results revealed that the most important factor that may lead to ED overcrowding according to nurses’ perceptions was presence of a lot of patient escorts in the ED” with weighted mean 91.6%, followed by the item “presence of some patients for non-urgent reasons” with weighted mean 86.6%. While the lowest item was “Delay in radiology results” with a weighted mean of 65.2% followed by the item “Lack of administrators in emergency department” with a weighted mean of 66.1%.

Conclusion

The study concluded that, from nurses’ perspectives, governmental hospitals in the Gaza Strip suffer from ED overcrowding, because of the shortage of healthcare providers with an increased flow of non-urgent cases with many escorts with the same patient. This increases the workload on the ED nurses, increases patient wait times and decreases patient satisfaction about the care provided in the ED. So, the study recommended to recruit more healthcare providers to work in emergency departments that may solve this problem.

Author(s): Ahmed H. Alsufi1*, Khalil Shoaib1, Abdelrahman Alhams1, Mohammed A. Aljabari1, Hamada K Dorgham1 Mahmoud S. Elkhateeb

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