Overcrowded emergency departments. Reasons, consequences and solutions

The majority of patients in hospital arrive through the emergency admission. Everyone working there knows the phenomenon of overcrowding in emergency rooms. Many factors have been and are still held responsible, for example emergency rooms are too small, too many non-emergency patients, bad triage, long examination times per patient and higher patient volumes. In this literature review based on international reviews, meta-analyses, original research papers and consensus papers, the definition of overcrowding in the emergency room is given and reasons are pointed out. It was found that the main factor responsible for the overcrowding of emergency admission departments is the so-called access block, the lack of patient discharge to hospital beds and not the reasons previously considered. Studies have shown that the long stay of emergency patients in the emergency department has deleterious consequences for the patient and can result in patient death. To eliminate the access block an optimized bed and discharge management is required.