To accommodate the 60,000 patient visits annually, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics expanded it Emergency Treatment Center (ETC).
Andrew Nugent, MD, FACEP, medical director of ETC at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, talks about the ETC:
How much bigger is the new ETC than the old center?
Our new facility has approximately 35 rooms and our old facility had 13 rooms that were used for seeing multiple patients. We had 10 other rooms that were single-purpose rooms and weren't functional to see all the kinds of patients that we see.
What improvements were made in the new center to accommodate patients?
Some of the things we're excited about are:
- All of the rooms have a sense of privacy to them. They have a door, there are no more curtains.
- All of the rooms are larger so they can accommodate families
- All of the rooms have a TV
What distinguishes a 'level one' trauma center?
A level one trauma center has to have a 24-hour surgeon and back-up neurosurgery, orthopaedics and all the surgical specialties, as well as do research associated with trauma.
Do all emergency treatment centers in Iowa have board-certified pediatric specialists on staff in the ER?
No, they don't. In fact the only two that I'm aware of are Blank in Des Moines and UI Hospitals and Clinics.
Why is it important for pediatric patients to have their space, separate from adult patients?
Part of it is that kids are a very special population. If you've ever been in an emergency room, you know all kinds of patients can come in. It's not always pleasant to have kids exposed to that. One of the things we did with this new facility is designate one section as the pediatric area. Those rooms are labeled and used by our pediatric specialists. The rooms are specially set up to accommodate families and kids.
I understand there is a designed 'Chest Pain Center.' What role does that play?
We've gone from two rooms that were kind of thrown together to do chest pain, to being able to do chest pain rule-outs to being able to do that in just about any room in the ER. For people with chest pain, you have to do about a six to eight hour workup to rule out whether or not they have heart problems. We're able to do that much more effectively in any of the rooms in our ER right now.
As part of the University's mission to teach, there are Emergency Medicine and Physician Assistant programs. Can you tell us briefly how those programs work as part of the ETC?
We're real proud of both programs.
The Emergency Medicine Residency was started about five years ago and we've graduated two classes. About half of those residents have stayed within Iowa, which we're very excited about. Our patient flow and patient care depends on having good residents, and they do a wonderful job.
We're really excited about the Physician Assistant Program, which started this year with our first two PA residents. We're trying to provide a resource for smaller hospitals to have a physician assistant, rather than a physician trained in minor emergencies, and knowing when to see a big emergency and get to where they can be treated much more effectively.
What are the next steps in the renovation and expansion of the ETC?
The very next step is to finish our trauma rooms, which should be done in the next two to three weeks. They are state-of-the-art, much larger than our old trauma rooms, and are set up in conjunction with our trauma team to handle the very worst of the traumas.
After that, our CT scanners should go in. We're probably one of the only facilities in the state to have two CT scanners specifically for the emergency room use. The functionality of the new scanners allows us to do anything from stroke research to chest pain evaluation, as well as our traumas. |
