Project Details
About the Project
As Emergency Medicine physicians, Dr. Ali Yakhshi Tafti and Dr. Skye Crawford cross paths with many patients during a shift. They often see people who need to be admitted, but who haven’t had goals of care or end of life planning conversations. In addition, patients requiring admission often have questions about how it all work – How long does admission take, what is the process, what can they expect?
Dr. Tafti and Dr. Crawford saw an opportunity to use the ‘down period’ awaiting admission to inpatient care to address both of these issues. They planned to develop a Goals of Care and Admission Q&A Infosheet to both plant a seed for advanced care planning conversations as well as provide answers to commonly asked questions about admissions.
Their project started well and was moving forward with good momentum before Summer 2024. However, the administrative and clinical changes required by Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) took away the team’s capacity for the project: They just didn’t have the time or bandwidth for this small but important QI initiative.
The Admission Q&A Handout still exists and it is used sometimes at Royal Jubilee Hospital. But at this point, the project is on pause. At this point, the emerg workforce is being stabilized and the team is finding their feet after a number of years challenges out of their control.
Maybe in the future, once a solid post-pandemic and post-CPOE foundation has been re-established in the emergency department, a champion will be able to pick up where Drs. Tafti and Crawford had to leave them. As shared by Dr. Tafti, “there are so many gaps and so many great ideas to fix them.” We look forward to supporting that work when the time is right!