Project NEED: New Efficiency in an Emergency Department

It was a cold and windy January day in Montreal. The pediatric emergency department’s (PED) waiting room was full of sick children. Most of them had high fever and were either coughing, crying, or vomiting. The average waiting time to see a doctor was more than 8 hours. Exhausted parents were asking the triage nurse why the waiting time was so long in the brand new emergency department (ED). Couldn’t the nurse understand that their small baby was sick and should have triage priority? As one parent became aggressive, the triage nurse called security. The waiting room looked more like a battlefield.