Links to the community

Co-ordinators play key role in improving emergency flow and access

Sharon Baril bursts into her tiny, windowless office and flops into a chair.

She pulls the keyboard tray towards her, grabs the mouse and begins clicking through the five computer programs that tell her all about the people who are in the Emergency Department at the Rockyview General Hospital.

The printer behind her constantly whirrs and spits out paper. Baril grabs a stack of papers from the tray and leafs through them, looking for new names since she last did this two hours ago.

Baril is a transition co-ordinator, tasked with helping patients—many of whom are seniors—who need community support following discharge. Co-ordinators anticipate and arrange community support in order to get patients out of emergency and back to their community as quickly and safely as possible, freeing beds in the process.

The role is given different names at different facilities, but regardless of how these health professionals are titled, they play a crucial role in Alberta emergency departments. And they’re all kept very busy.

Today, Baril is once again pinging back and forth between nurses, doctors, emergency medical technicians, patients and their families in an effort to understand the ‘big picture’ that surrounds every patient.

“I’m always looking ahead to see what kind of problems a patient may encounter on discharge,” Baril says. “I try to look ahead as much as I can.”

Baril stops briefly to chat with a nurse about a patient she’s been monitoring, then hurries around a corner to check on a 102-year-old woman who just arrived on the unit complaining of leg pain.

Back at her office, Baril discovers the woman is a designated assisted living resident but, following discussions with the doctor and the woman’s daughter,  determines long-term care might be a more appropriate setting due to the woman’s diminished mobility.

Baril then crosses the department and brushes aside a curtain to speak with a husband and wife, aged 88 and 90. The wife sits nervously beside her husband’s bed and tells Baril the pair lives alone and independently.

She chats for a few minutes, asking questions about the couple’s mobility and their ability to access services.

“A lot of old people don’t have advocates,” Baril says later. “They live alone and don’t have anyone to look out for them.”

Baril is always linking people to services. She helps people access Meals on Wheels. She hands out pamphlets for social agencies and gives information on how someone with limited mobility can get a prescription filled.

“Linkages, linkages, linkages,” she says with a smile.

Dr. Dan O’Connor sits in front of a computer in the middle of the busy emergency ward. He stops typing and smiles as Baril approaches.

“Transition co-ordinators are vital to what we do here,” he says. “I don’t know what we would do without them. They bring the information that we don’t know from the community in here and they also get our information back to the people in the community…. It’s the continuity of care.”

“Without them,” adds Dr. Stuart Turner, “we would be bogged down with so many issues.”

At Rockyview, transition co-ordinators work eight hour shifts and cover the unit from 8 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

“It doesn’t end,” Baril says with a laugh. “The patients just keep coming …. We’re constantly doing assessments of one type or another. It’s never a boring job.”