Predictors of Older Patients’ Stay in the Emergency Department

Abstract

   Objective: To examine the predictive power that each of these factors had on older patients’ length of stay in the emergency department: sex, age, comorbidity, right to medical service, severity of the emergency, shift during which service was received, crowdedness, and discharge status
   Design: Predictive correlational research
   Methodology: The researcher recruited a sample of 113 patients, all of whom were aged 60 years or older, treated for non-trauma conditions in the emergency department, and with the emergency severity level of 2- 4, at a large tertiary hospital in Bangkok. Data were collected during January to April 2021 using the Demographic and Clinical Profle, the Charlson Comorbidity Index, the EDWIN Score, the Emergency Severity Index (version 4), and the Length of Stay in ED form. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression.
   Results: The majority of the patients (55.8%) were females with an average age of 72.83 (SD = 9.12) and an average of 17 hours and 18 minutes of treatment time in the emergency department. Over three-fourths of the patients (77%) received four or more hours of treatment in the emergency department. The factors of sex (male), comorbidity, receipt of treatment during a night shift, and hospitalisation effectively predicted the need for four or more hours of treatment in the emergency department, with a variance of 33.5 (Nagelkerke R2 = 0.335), at 3.183, 1.490, 0.169, and 8.664 times, respectively.
   Recommendations: The study fndings could be utilised as supporting data for nursing care for older patients in the emergency department. It is recommended that nurses pay special attention to hospitalised older male patients with comorbidities, to ensure their timely treatment and reduce their length of stay in the emergency department.