Emergency dept sees 120 patients per day: Doctor

THE Port Moresby General Hospital emergency department sees 120 patients per day, says a doctor.
Acting coordinator emergency department Dr Duncan Sengiromo said this during the graduation of 65 staff from the hospital yesterday.
The staff underwent the interagency integrated triage tool training programme for six months and graduated with certificates.
Dr Sengiromo said the programme was aimed at improving the triage and data collection at the emergency department.
He said PMGH was a busy place as and it served the whole of NCD, Gulf, Central and the country.
The training would help staff attend to patients according to how critical their conditions were.
“Triage means sorting, it’s a way of seeing the critically ill first and the other that can wait, we can see later,” Dr Sengiromo said.
“With the minimal resources and the limited staff, this system helps us to be more efficient.
“The training received, we align ourselves with the national health plan and second is that as the referral hospital the entry of patients comes through our department.”
He said the level of how critical patients conditions were, varied and there had to be a way to arrange how we see our patients.
“Not first come first serve as we know, it has to be the most critically ill to be seen first,” he said.
“We have three categories now – one is the red category that has to be seen as soon as possible, second is the yellow category, it can wait a bit patients, and third is the green, they can wait longer than the two categories.”