title: The 'who are all these people?' study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Overcrowding of emergency departments (EDs) adversely affects the delivery of emergency care and results in increased patient mortality.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To examine what contributes to the ED crowd and to specifically examine the patient associated population. The ED in which the research was performed is consistently one of the most overcrowded in Ireland.
  
  
  RESULTS
  On average 66.7% of the patients in the ED during the study period were boarded awaiting a hospital bed following full processing by the ED staff and agreement by the on-call team that admission was required. The most overcrowded part of the department was the majors area. In this area 55.5% of those present were patients, visitors accounted for 16.6% of occupants, nursing staff 11%, on-call teams 7% and the ED doctors 6.3%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Knowing who the people in the crowd are helps to guide management decisions about how the crowd might be reduced. Our department now has a strict accompanying person/visitor policy that limits the number of visitors to patients and limits visiting times for those relatives with a patient who is experiencing a prolonged stay in the ED.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Peadar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gilligan
authors.affiliation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Danny
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Joseph
authors.affiliation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bartlett
authors.affiliation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Aoife
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Morris
authors.affiliation: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Ajay
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mahajan
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McHugh
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hillary
authors.affiliation: Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: O'Kelly
mesh_terms: D003441:Crowding; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007494:Ireland; D007902:Length of Stay; D010564:Personnel, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors; D014789:Visitors to Patients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: Clinical Care; Effectiveness; Effieciency; Emergency Department Management