Emergency Department re-design

Client

Capital & Coast District Health Board

Key skills

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Qualitative Research

• Uncovering Insights

The challenge

The Capital and Coast District Health Board were in the process of creating a design for a new Emergency Department (ED) at Wellington Hospital. They approached Maven Consulting (where I was a consultant) to look at how they could better understand the needs of ED staff and stakeholders within the design.

The approach

I lead the qualitative research alongside another Maven Consultant. We firstly carried out a stakeholder analysis to identify who we needed to speak with and then ensured that our research questions and plan aligned with our clients needs.

We carried out our research across the hospital and within ED. We were flexible to the needs of staff to ensure that we created as little disruption as possible for the ED and hospital.

We also spent time within the ED observing, this was to get a better understanding of the wider environment, rather than just individual staff perspectives. Our research included nurses, ED doctors, allied health practitioners, reception staff, ED managers, and patient focus groups.

The outcome

The output of our research was a summary report which was themed into insight areas. The report provided the CCDHB with considerations as to how the new ED should be designed to work better for staff and stakeholders.

Highlights

Gaining an appreciation of what it’s like for our dedicated ED staff to work in an environment which is often stressful, chaotic, loud, and sometimes dangerous.

Key collaborators

Nathan Tuhaka, Maven Consultant