Application: Systems Theory

Healthcare organizations provide nursing services centered on multiple theories. For instance, the Open Systems Theory established in 1978 by Katz and Kahn considers the healthcare organization as social systems divided into interconnected subsystems (Meyer & O’Brien-Pallas, 2010). Meyers and O’Brien-Pallas (2010) provide that these interrelated subsystems include outputs, throughputs, inputs, negative feedbacks and a cycle of events. The primary care hospital environment has various units that handle different cases including the intensive care, intermediate care, medical-surgery, emergency department (ED) etcetera. This paper delves into system theory in the emergency department, identify goals and challenges in this department and establishes an appropriate structural outcome.

Subsystems in Emergency Department

In the emergency department, the inputs include financial resources, supplies, and staffing needed for the unit to be functional. The emergency department is in operation all day and night and needs sufficient nurses and subordinate staff to give a throughput of services. More inputs in the ED include the material required to provide nursing intervention that can be bought from various outside vendors (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). Some of the materials purchased include paper. Pencils, pens, glucometers, intravenous fluids, and gauze. The hospital organization develops a unit budget for each hospital department to ensure they can purchase these supplies.

The unit uses all the inputs to create products, and its maximum rate of production is the throughputs. For instance, in the emergency department, the throughput entails all the nursing services provided by the team to the patients who seek their services (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). The output entails the number of patients that the team can give services to after using the inputs. The service output in the emergency department creates revenue after the patients pay for the services (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). The health organization then utilizes... The performance indicators keep the organization in check and ensure it does not fall off on its target and meets its goals (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). In the emergency department, emphasis rests on various quality performance measures including patient and employee satisfaction, patient throughput, and monitor department throughput.

Problems in the ED

The biggest problem that the emergency department is grappling with include overcrowding. The ED faces the challenge of increasing number of patients and significant numbers of admitted patients next in line to be transferred to an inpatient bed (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). Delays in treating patients with severe conditions result in dissatisfaction, patients backlog, insufficient management of serious pain, and increased rates of mortality.

However, ED might be failing because of system issues beyond its capacity including other sections of the system failing to provide socioeconomic and psychosocial supports, shortfalls in the community primary care system, or even the patients being able to get better services elsewhere. The Input-Throughput-Output conceptual framework is largely employed to depict the overcrowding issue in the ED (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). The input component is all about the emergency services demand affected by timely access to community and primary services as well as the prevalence of mental illnesses, trauma, chronic illnesses, and acute illnesses. The percentage of individuals who are vulnerable based on socioeconomic aspects influence the input component as well. ED throughput component is all about the efficiencies in the department and the patient processing capacity (Kamal, Barnard, & Christenson, 2014). Throughput is affected by factors like staff resource availability, physical space, and having efficient processes. The output segment…