According to the regional hospital, the number of self-referrals to the emergency room has been on the rise in the past four years, and was up by seven percent last year.

Marit Märk, head of the ER at the North Estonia Medical Center (PERH), said patients in the green and blue triage categories who did not require emergency specialist care accounted for 76 percent of all self-referrals. Half still did not need to see a specialist after attending the emergency room.

Märk stressed that the emergency room's focus is on providing emergency care to patients with medical conditions requiring urgent intervention. Patients with milder medical conditions will be attended by a nurse who has received specialist training and has clinical experience in the ER.

"A patient with a mild health problem needs to get primary care from their family doctor and family nurse. The role of family nurses has been growing in health centers, and we can see this in the emergency department, too, so we need to start involving nurses more in the provision of the independent reception services," said Märk, adding that the ER is intended only for patients in need of emergency care

"However, people with milder health problems also come to us, and so, I am very pleased that from April this year special nurses working in the ER will have the right to receive them," Märk added.

Upon arrival at the ER, patients are divided into five triage categories according to the severity of their conditions. The triage is performed by a triage nurse, with the assistance of an on-call emergency physician if necessary. Under the new arrangements introduced in April, special nurses were given the right to independently see patients in the green or blue categories.

Patients in the green triage category are those with health problems that do not require urgent emergency intervention, with the time to a specialist nurse or doctor up to three hours. Patients in the blue category do not require emergency care and their medical condition does not qualify under the previous triage categories. For these patients, the time to a specialist nurse or doctor may be up to six hours.

"The aim of this change is to reduce the workload of doctors in the self-referral zone and free up doctors' resources to treat higher priority patients who arrive by ambulance in life-threatening or potentially life-threatening conditions," said Märk.

The nurse reception project was piloted by the hospital as early as 2023, and according to Marianna Ležepjokova, head of nursing in the ER, the feedback so far has been very positive.

---

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!