General introduction
As the frontline service of UFH, the Emergency Department (ED) door is open 24/7 providing medical care for a wide variety of emergencies from severe trauma to chest pain, from bowel obstruction to stroke, from eye foreign body to suicide attempt, from miscarriage to neonatal jaundice. As part of their daily job, well trained and competent physicians and nurses are highly motivated to stabilize critical patients with medical and surgical emergencies that arrive at any time of the day or night.
Competent Emergency Medicine team
The emergency medicine physicians and nurses have highly comprehensive and advanced knowledge and skills to deal with challenging cases that present to ED all the time. All the emergency medicine physicians have the certificates of Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), many have a certificate of Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS). Some staff even have the certificate of BLS/ACLS/PALS/ATLS Instructor/Faculty, which allows them to provide training to staff from other departments and facilities.
What makes us unique
Patients always comes first, no question. We provide evidence-based medical care to our patients. We strictly follow international guidelines and work hard towards the best outcome every time and for every patient. The art of service excellence has been always emphasized in addition to the science of clinical excellence in the UFH Emergency Department. We treat patients as a whole human being, not as a single disease or injury. We respect patient’s privacy, their culture, and their values. We try everything in our power to meet patient’s needs that arise other than only medical concerns.
Results show excellence
Our target is a “door to balloon time” of 90 minutes for heart attack patients (patients with ST elevation - STEMI - on their ECG). We hope thereby to reduce mortality and morbidity for patients with a heart attack. At the same time, we have made and continue to make every possible effort to avoid the over-prescription of blood tests/antibiotics and overtreatment of IV therapy, which often requires lengthy discussions with a patient or a patient’s family.
How do our patients benefit
With our professionalism and dedication, the UFH Emergency Department is the place everyone can trust when they have a medical emergency.
We have been trying to minimize the traumatic effects of invasive procedures by providing adequate pain control, sedation, alternative less-invasive and less-painful procedures (e.g. the use of medical glue to close a laceration instead of using sutures which requires painful injection of local anesthesia), and family accompaniment (allowing parents to stay when their kid receives sutures).
There is a long list of consultants from different specialties on call for patients in the Emergency Department including cardiologists, ENT, ophthalmologists, neurologists, dentists, psychologists, urologists, plastic surgeons, general surgeons, pediatric surgeons, OBGYN physicians, and orthopedic and sports medicine specialists are all on call for any emergency procedure.
We have a 24 hour blood blank for any patient with massive bleeding who needs a blood transfusion. We can perform CT angiogram and MRI 24/7 that can help us to rapidly diagnose life threatening disorders like pulmonary embolism, aortic dissection/aneurysm, stroke, etc.
The Emergency Department in each UFH facility have established multiple green channels with local tertiary hospitals. The green channels will be initiated when a transfer is indicated.
