Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

ED healthcare professionals and their notions of productivity

Moffat, Fiona; Timmons, Stephen; Coffey, Frank

Authors

Fiona Moffat

STEPHEN TIMMONS stephen.timmons@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Health Services Management

FRANK COFFEY frank.coffey@nottingham.ac.uk
Clinical Consultant To The Postgraduate Clinical Skills Prog



Abstract

Objective: The combination of constrained resources, patient complexity and rapidly increasing demand has meant that healthcare productivity constitutes a significant problem for emergency medicine. However, healthcare productivity remains a contentious issue, with some criticising the level of professional engagement. This paper will propose that productivity improvements in healthcare could occur (and be sustained) if professionals' perceptions and views of productivity were better understood.
Methods: An 8-month ethnographic study was conducted in a large UK ED, using semistructured interviews with healthcare professionals (HCPs) (n=26), a focus group and observation. Thematic analysis of the data was undertaken based on an interpretivist philosophy.
Results: The data demonstrate that HCPs accept productivity improvement as part of their contemporary professional role. In particular, their understanding of productivity is focused around five key domains: the patient; the professional; the culture; the process of work and the economic.
Conclusions: By exploring how these HCPs experienced and made sense of productivity improvement and productive healthcare, the data reveals how HCPs may reconcile a culture of caring with one of efficiency. Understanding healthcare productivity from this perspective has potential implications for service improvement design and performance measurement.

Citation

Moffat, F., Timmons, S., & Coffey, F. (2016). ED healthcare professionals and their notions of productivity. Emergency Medicine Journal, 33(11), 789–793. https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2015-205164

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 18, 2016
Online Publication Date Apr 12, 2016
Publication Date Nov 1, 2016
Deposit Date Dec 8, 2017
Print ISSN 1472-0205
Publisher BMJ Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 33
Issue 11
Pages 789–793
DOI https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2015-205164
Public URL http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2016/04/12/emermed-2015-205164.full.pdf+html
Publisher URL https://emj.bmj.com/content/33/11/789