Emergency Medicine Specialists’ Knowledge of Hospital Emergency Department Indicators and Their Role in Patient Treatment: A Qualitative Study

Background: National indicators have been defined for the satisfaction and efficiency of emergency services and for evaluating their functionality. These indicators enlighten strengths and areas where improvements can help improve emergency ward quality. Objectives: This study assessed the knowledge of medical specialists and their experiences, especially concerning the effects of these protocols. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in 2019 in the emergency departments of hospitals affiliated with the Iran University of Medical Sciences. During semi-structured interviews with 20 professors of emergency medicine in 2019, their experiences regarding the effects of these indicators on providing emergency services were evaluated. The data were collected until saturation. All interviews were recorded with the participant’s permission and then transcribed verbatim and analyzed by content analysis method, and their semantic codes were extracted. Results: By analyzing the interviews, 14 subcategories, and four main categories were obtained. Categories and subcategories consisted of providing services to patients (with three subcategories: Improving the quality of medical services, waiting time reduction, and increasing satisfaction), improving emergency efficiency and performance (with five subcategories: Improving conditions, services, communication improvement, resource management, and facilities and equipment), accreditation (with three subcategories: Performance improvement, management and planning, and service quality improvement), and proposed indicators (with three subcategories: Time, capacity, and resources). Conclusions: The recognition of emergency medicine specialists in hospital emergencies is below average, which can affect the manner of providing health services and upgrading national indicators. With more and more familiarity of emergency medicine specialists with the indicators, a step can be taken to improve the status of hospital emergencies, thus determining patients’ tasks faster, reducing the length of stay in the emergency department, increasing patient satisfaction, and improving the performance of the emergency department.