Mortality at UCH ’s emergency department less than 7 % —CMD

Two years down the line, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said it had reduced mortality at its emergency department to between five and seven per cent.

The Hospital’s, Chief Medical Director, Professor Temitope Alonge made the disclosure while commissioning a set of multi-parameter patient monitors for the hospital’s emergency department.

The hospital had received a donation of four multi-parameter patient monitors from a company, Global Organics  and intending to buy more for its high dependency medical ward.

Professor Alonge, explaining that the multi-parameter patients’ monitors would help ensure that patients are resuscitated more effectively and at no extra cost to them, said the hospital’s emergency mortality rate was far below that in many hospitals.

He said that globally, mortality rate at emergency department of most hospitals is between five and 40 per cent.

While explaining the working of the monitors, he stated that they are all connected to a central unit, and as such even from a distance, nurses and staff on duty can better monitor the clinical status of each patient in their care.

“If there is an anomaly, it will alarm. That alarm will also get across to the central monitor. This innovation is exactly what obtains in civilised societies.

“When patients come in and they are poly traumatised, if we put them on these monitor, you can actually tell that the major attention is cardiac related as opposed to looking at the fracture the patient has.

“Now, it will reduce the length of stay at the department; it will allow us transit the patient quickly and it will even allow us to take the right decision as to whether they need the intensive unit care or they can be managed from wards. It is very critical and now we are extending this to the medical wards,” he declared.