Satisfaction of health professionals after implementation of a primary care hospital emergency centre in Switzerland: A prospective before-after study

Abstract

Background and aim: The increasing number of patients requiring emergency care is a challenge and leads to decreased satisfaction of health professionals at emergency departments (EDs). Thus, a Swiss hospital implemented a hospital-associated primary care centre at the ED. The study aim was to investigate changes in job satisfaction of ED staff before and after the implementation of this new service model and to measure hospital GPs' (HGPs) satisfaction at the hospital-associated primary care centre.

Method: This study was embedded in a large prospective before-after study over two years. We examined changes in job satisfaction with a questionnaire followed by selected interviews approaching all of the involved 25 ED staff members and 38 HGPs.

Results: The new emergency care model increased job satisfaction of ED staff and HGPs in all measured dimensions. The overall job satisfaction of ED employees improved from 76.5 to 83.9 points (visual analogue scale 0-100; difference 7.4 points [95% CI: 1.3 to 13.5, p = 0.02]). 86% of 29 HGPs preferred to provide their out-of-hours service at the new hospital-associated primary care centre.

Conclusions: The hospital-associated primary care centre is a promising option to improve job satisfaction of different health professionals in emergency care.

Keywords: Emergency department; Emergency medical services; Health service research; Hospital medical staff; Job satisfaction; Primary health care.