Urgent and Unscheduled Care Centers - Essay Example

Number] Urgent and Unscheduled Care In the given scenario, since Simon is an old, 75 year old man, he needs urgent care to ensure that it is not something serious. Urgent care refers to the delivery of immediate care to a patient who arrives at the hospital or walk in centre. At times this facility is also available outside the emergency department of a hospital so that the patients can get immediate advice and treatment. These patients are usually suffering of an injury which needs immediate treatment or an illness which is to be treated urgently, not necessarily life taking but it can be serious enough to bring the patient to the hospital emergency. Urgent care centres shall be open on a continuous and 24-hour basis. Unscheduled care can be defined not only as the professional care, but also as the social care provided to a patient who cannot be ignored. The need of the unscheduled care is not pre-planned or an appointment with a professional. The concept says that the demand for unscheduled care can possibly incur at any time and the services should be provided in order to fulfil the demands of the one in need. Whenever contacted for, the unscheduled care shall be available. It gives the framework that if the unscheduled care is delayed, it can result in the loss of time or long term illness (Hill 34). The urgent and unscheduled care may have five levels of care at which they are operable. The levels of care are organized in the way of their priorities and type of care required. As the complexity of the problem increases, the volumes of such patients coming for urgent need decreases. This is because the more complex the problem of the patient will be, the more planned and organized the treatment will be for which there is scheduled care. The levels of care are a strategic framework according to which the hospitals and walk in centres prepare their equipment and professionals. The first level of urgent care is the self care. This means the patient is capable enough to provide himself with the immediate care needed, for example an injury happens, so the patient himself washes it, applies an antiseptic and puts on a band-aid. Self care can be provided by the nearby people or family members too. At times self care is provided by professionals through techniques such as the phone and internet. In some countries there are medical professionals who are available on the phone and internet 24 hours a day, so the patient can get the best urgent treatment at home if getting to the hospital may take long (Laird, Wardrope 278). The second level of care is the primary care which is also not serious and life threatening but it certainly requires some level of care immediately. This includes minor injuries for which hospital care is needed immediately but it is not life threatening. For this level of care, there are professional advices available on a phone call too but the hospital or walk in centre may be considered due to the equipment and medicines needed. The third level of care is where the patient suffers from a life threatening attack and needs immediate professional care. For this the patient might need to call the ambulance and reach the hospital without any delay. This is a complex situation and professionals are needed to treat these patients. The fourth level of care is where the patient needs continuous health care and is admitted in the hospital for detailed treatment. As the levels of care increase, the complexity of the illness increases. Patients who are admitted in the hospitals may enter for urgent care and the doctors conclude that they need to get admitted. These patients need residential care. The last level of care is the specialist treatment by the hospital professionals such as a surgery. Usually surgeries are not included in urgent or unscheduled care since they are planned and appointments need to be taken for the preparation but the patients that come in walk in centres for immediate care may be advised for surgeries (Munro, Salisbury 55). As the health care system is improving in developed and developing countries, the professionals have now increasingly understood the value of urgent care. Not only in the public sector, but the private sector is also improving their walk in centres and resources needed for urgent and unscheduled care. The public has access to various sources through which they can receive the appropriate urgent care needed. The urgent care centres cannot be ignored or neglected as there are certain needs of patients that cannot be delayed. Previously many hospitals did not support their urgent care system and patients had to suffer in various parts of the globe. Now, with the improvement in health care services and the efforts to give health care services to the public at large has enabled hospitals and professionals to increase their resources in the urgent care centres (Hill 34). There are a number of factors to keep in mind when a hospital is developing its urgent care centre. The resource utilization should be essential for the urgent care centres as they need to be prepared and ready with all the necessary equipment and resources at the time of urgent need. The management of the resources to ensure effective treatment is also an important factor when a hospital decides to open a walk in centre. Although the patients who need urgent care may not be suffering from serious or life threatening issues, but a delay in the immediate care needed may cause them to suffer serious illnesses for example in the given scenario, Simon has a cold and is not feeling very well since a few days, although the issue does not seem to be very serious or life threatening, but considering he is 75 and has been suffering from asthma, if he is not provided with the required health advice he may suffer serious issues. Thus, there are several aspects to consider for an effective output for patients. The decision making process is one of the crucial aspects of the urgent and unscheduled care which needs to be considered in order to ensure effective treatment. The recent consideration given to the urgent care centres include the delivery of the right care by the right person in the right place and time. In order to ensure that the treatment given is effective, the professionals have to make sure that the right person is available at the right time for the patients who need it at the time of emergency. The person sitting in the urgent and unscheduled care centre needs to have an effective communication bridge with the primary care team and emergency care departments in order to take the right professional decisions for the patients (Thomas, Haynes 288). The urgent care centres need to have a directory which consists of the services that are expected to be present in urgent care centres. This would help the professionals to refer to the right service at the right time. People in the urgent care centres should know exactly which services are available, which service is needed to the patient and where it would be available. This should be managed so that the patient does not have to wait and everything happens in a systematic way without barriers promoting bad health care. Entering in the urgent care centre may make the patient anxious and he may suffer from anxiety. To avoid this, the urgent and unscheduled care centres should have people who are there to support the patient in order to avoid their long term bad health conditions. Their needs should be fulfilled with the required support available for them. These centres should be made at the place where it is the best and easiest for the patient to access. Most of these walk in centres are made outside the hospitals which make them easily accessible. The most important aspect is the decision making process in these centres. Although professionals are present there, it is generally a law to consider the will of the patient when treating him and it is important to tell him the complete information about what is being given to him. But in the urgent care centres, the basic priority is the life of the patient and thus some of these formalities may be left undone. This is why the decision making power is flexible so that the patient received the right care at the right time. Every hospital may have its own considerations regarding the decision making process for urgent and unscheduled care. Sometimes the decisions may be challenged later thus the urgent and unscheduled care centres consist of skilled professionals who are expert clinicians and capable of giving the patients with the right advice and treatment. These experts give the professional advice and help in the decision making process to assess the needs of the patients, and give decisions for the best treatment possible. There are some people who regularly attend the unscheduled care centres due to their unbalanced health conditions, for them there are special plans to work according and to understand their needs. Effective decision making is in the hands of the professionals who are available at the urgent health care centres to manage the needs of the patients. In the absence of the professionals’ advice, the decision making may be weak and unreliable (Hill 34). In Simon’s scenario, he arrives at the urgent care walk in centre for advice and thus he should be given the advice by a professional who asks about his history of asthma, and the medicines he takes and treats him according to that. The decision making cannot be left for the patient or the social care provider as it will weaken the reliability of the urgent care advice. In order to successfully carry out the urgent and unscheduled needs of a patient, the multidisciplinary team comes together and contributes to the health services to avoid any inconvenience to the patient in the future. Many of the clinicians have come together and developed the standards of the urgent care and their performance indicators define that the best urgent and unscheduled care is delivered when the quality of care is high. If the quality is low, the need for urgent care arises again and again which results in prolonged and bad health care. Since urgent care is unscheduled and immediate, there can be several needs of the patients that are to be fulfilled. This may require professionals of different fields for example psychiatrists, paediatrician or gynaecologists to come together and plan the health services available in urgent care centres (Munro, Salisbury 55). A multidisciplinary team in the urgent care centres will provide the patients with the limitless services under professional supervision. The responsibility of the urgent care centre towards the patients is to provide them with the right professional advice for which a multidisciplinary team works together towards a common aim which is to meet the patient’s needs. For planned treatment the patient can take appointments with professionals and go to their respective clinics, but in urgent needs the patients may not be able to go to specialists thus they go to the urgent care centres. At these centres, experts are present who have coordination with the multidisciplinary team so that they can give professional advice to the patients. The multidisciplinary team is a team of professionals working for the fulfilment of needs of the patients who come for unscheduled care. They participate actively as a team and work for the betterment of health care services. A multidisciplinary team contributes in identifying the early diagnosis and the treatment for the patient (Laird, Wardrope 278). There is a concept of risk in the urgent and unscheduled care practises. Since the care needed is immediate and unplanned, it may be risky because of the sudden advice and medicines being used. Although professionals and experts are present, the need may be so urgent that if they are not attentive, it may cause risk to the lives of the patients. The patients may have the risk of getting the wrong treatment especially if there are many patients in the need for treatment and the professionals and nurses are serving all of them at once. Wrong or delayed treatment can cause a risk to the health of the patients. Moreover, the care provided is usually not consented or documentation is not done because of the immediate nature of the care. Hence, the patients may not be able to claim for the bad treatment that they receive. Hospitals that open walk in centres and urgent care centres should be responsible and careful towards the provision of health services. It is a risky job if the hospital has limited funds and resources as the urgent care centre should be professional and resourceful. If the wrong treatment is given to the patient it can risk the lives of the patients, the reputation of the hospital and the job of the professional working in the centre. Many risks are involved in this type of health care, especially at the public health level because bad health care would result in a negative impact on the whole society. Older patients like Simon may be at a higher risk level when they arrive for advice at the walk in centre, thus patients like these should be treated with care, support and responsibility so that their health is not risked. The health care policies regarding the urgent and unscheduled care are improvising and getting more flexible gradually. The government policy regarding the urgent health care system states that the public should be accessible to the health care no matter where and when they need it. It is the responsibility of the public health care system to develop and operate the urgent care centres to advance and enhance the overall health care system. The unscheduled care should be efficient, safe and effective according to the regulations of the government policies for healthcare. The government expectations from these centres are that they would successfully provide health care to the patients who need it on an unplanned basis as it is the right of the citizens to receive health care whenever they need it. The services should be high quality regardless of the situation in which they are asked for (Thomas, Haynes 288). The current policies of the government encourage and support the organizations to collaborate with the public health department of urgent care as it is a social responsibility of the citizens to provide one another with the immediate care and support at the time of need. The increased awareness would improve the level of unscheduled care programs and centres which would eventually improvise the health care system. The government regulations will also ensure that the services provided in these centres are high quality and the professionals are experts in their field. For other patients who need advice or care for minor issues like injuries there is telephonic access to the health care professional who can guide them continuously. However, the government has been successfully imposing policies on the urgent and unscheduled health care centres and it has a positive impact on the reliability and quality of these services (Munro, Salisbury 55). Work Cited Hill Mary. Professional Issues in Primary Care Nursing. UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print. Laird Colville, Wardrope Jim. Community Emergency Medicine. China: Elsevier Health Sciences, 2008‎. Print. ‎ Munro James, Salisbury Chris. Walk-in centres in primary care: a review of the international literature. UK: The British Journal of General Practise, 2003‎. Print. ‎ Thomas Malcolm, Haynes Keith. Clinical Risk Management in Primary Care. Cornwall: Radcliffe Publishing, 2005‎. Print. ‎ Read More