Patient-Centered Process Optimization in A German Emergency Department With A Particular Focus on Sufficient Pain Management: A Best Practice Model for the Continouus Improvement of Quality and Patient Satisfaction

While pain is the main reason for patients to visit ahospital’s emergency department (ED), it is a hardly exploredphenomenon in this context. Moreover, while effective painmanagement is the most important dimension of patientsatisfaction in EDs, there is a lack of studies in Central Europewhich could be used for optimizing the deficient painmanagement in these units. This study will clarify whether theimplementation of an interdisciplinary structured pain managementimproves the care of patients in the emergency room andwhether its use improves patient satisfaction. Additionally, itinvestigates whether the implementation of such a structuredpain management system will also bring advantages for the workof personnel employed in the emergency room. To this end, amultimethod approach was chosen, in which both the patientstreated in the emergency room and the staff working there wereinterviewed by a written survey during a two-week examinationperiod before and after the implementation. Included were allpatients of the somatic departments who met the ethical criteria,as well as all doctors and nurses. Data analysis and processingwas carried out using Microsoft Excel. It was found that the useof a structured pain management system leads to better, moreeffective pain treatment of the patients in the emergencydepartment and increases their overall satisfaction with theirtreatment. Furthermore, it is easy to use by the staff and reducestheir workload so that they have more time to spend on patient care