Rural Emergency Department Staffing: Potential Implications for the Quality of Emergency Care Provided in Rural Areas. Policy Brief

摘要

The majority of rural hospitals use more than one type of staffing to cover their Emergency Department (ED), including combinations of physicians on their own medical staff, contracts with emergency physician management groups and with individual physicians, and physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs). It is important to ensure that the family physicians, internists, PAs, NPs and nurses who staff rural EDs have the expertise and technical skills needed to provide evidence-based ED care. Rural ED staff would benefit from additional continuing education opportunities, particularly in terms of specialized skills to care for pediatric emergency patients and trauma patients and training in working effectively in teams.