ArticleBMC emergency medicine2021
Increasing consultant-level staffing as a proportion of overall physician coverage improves emergency department length of stay targets.
Article in BMC emergency medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Predictors of diagnostic errors in computed tomography interpretation by emergency physicians leading to changes in clinical management in the emergency department.Emergency radiology · 2025Article
- Work unit level personnel working hours and the patients' length of in-hospital stay-An administrative data approach.PLOS digital health · 2023Article
- Improvements to emergency department length of stay and user satisfaction after implementation of an integrated consult order.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesOne goal of Emergency Department (ED) operations is achieving an overall length of stay (LOS) that is less than four hours. The goal of the current study was to assess for association between increasing number of on-duty EM Consultants and LOS, while adjusting for overall (all-grade) on-duty emergency doctors' numbers and other operational factors.
methodsThis was a retrospective analysis of three years (2016-2019) of data, employing a unit of analysis of 3276 eight-hour ED shifts. The study was conducted using a prospectively populated ED database in a busy (annual census 420,000) Middle Eastern ED with staffing by Consultants and multiple non-Consultant grades (Specialists, fellows, and residents). Using logistic regression, the main predictor variable of "on-duty Consultant n" was assessed for association with the study's primary (dichotomous) endpoint: whether a shift's median LOS met the target of < 240 min. Linear regression was used to assess for association between on-duty Consultant n and the study's secondary (continuous) endpoint: median LOS for the ED shift.
resultsMultivariate logistic regression adjusting for a number of operations factors (including total EP on-duty complement) identified an association between increasing n of on-duty Consultants and the likelihood of a shift's meeting the 4-h ED LOS target (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.34, p < .0001). Multiple linear regression, which also adjusted for total on-duty EP n and other operational factors, also indicated LOS benefit from more on-duty Consultants: each additional on-duty Consultant was associated with a shift's median LOS improving by 5.4 min (95% CI 4.3 to 6.5, p < .0001).
conclusionsAt the study site, in models that adjusted for overall on-duty EP numbers as well as myriad other operational factors, increasing numbers of on-duty Consultants was associated with a statistically and operationally significant reduction in ED LOS.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.