The Impact of 4 Hour Wait Target in Accident and Emergency on Staff Morale - Case Study Example

In this regard, National Health Service has introduced four-hour target in emergency and accident department. National Health Service plan of 2000 has resulted to the introduction of four-hour target to the emergency department in the UK. According to the proposed plan, no patients should be waiting in the emergency and accident department for more than four hours. The four-hour target is eligible for both admission as well as discharge from the hospital. However, the target was reduced to 98 per cent in 2004, due to the clinical exceptions involved in providing services.

The four-hour target plan was introduced due to the increased concern of emergency care. For any medical institute, it is very essential to provide emergency care to the patients and to reduce the long waiting hour (Gunal & Pidd, 2006). The primary care provided by the hospital is determined by the basic services offered to them that include time involved in getting an access to medical services. Introduction of the four-hour target in hospitals has improved the waiting hour in the UK emergency and accidents departments.

However, the question still exits whether the patients are having full benefit of the plan introduced. In addition to this, the four-hour target imposes a restriction on the ability of the working staff to provide quality of care to each individual. The introduction of four-hour target plan affects the level of job satisfaction of the working members of the hospitals, because of increase in pressure to provide quality services along with maintaining the targets set by National Health Service (Letham & Gray, 2012).

The aim of the research is to analyse the impact of the introduction of national performance target. The paper examines the impact of four-hour target in accident and emergency department on the staff morale in National Health Service over the last five years.To analyse the impact of the introduction of four-hour target plan introduced by National Health Service and to examine its influence on employee staff morale over the last five years. In this context, the research question is ‘how has the introduction of national performance targets (4 hours wait accident and emergency target) impacted staff morale in the NHS over the last 5 years?

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