OBJECTIVES: One of the most cross-cutting points of health care is emergency care. Since the introduction of the single-gate system, enabling patients enter the system at a single point, patient number has doubled or even increased many times. The high number of patients led to a negative trend in both patient satisfaction and workload. Patients have become less satisfied, and leave of health care providers has increased. From this year we have introduced several methods to stop and reverse this trend: communication trainings, introducing of emergency department dispatcher status, reducing triage times and increasing the number of specialists and nurses.

METHODS: Longitudinal, quantitative, descriptive study was performed involving patients and relatives (n = 575) at the University Emergency Department, Clinical Centre, University of Pécs, between 1 January and 15 December 2019. The self-designed questionnaire measured opinions about staff, care and the environment of the unit, and then the questions were re-iterated and answers repeatedly analyzed. For data analysis descriptive statistics, two-sample t-test and linear regression were performed (p <0.05).

RESULTS: In the first month 51% of patients and relatives positively assessed emergency care, until November, 2019 when satisfaction increased to 99%. Patient satisfaction improved steadily and significantly over the months (r = 0.92, p = 0.001). Opinions about nurses (t = 13.05, p <0.001), doctors (t = 7.11, p <0.001) and the unit (t = 12.49, p <0.001) changed after the training and reorganization.

CONCLUSIONS: Our research ended with a positive result, which requires continuous follow-up. We can conclude that the effects of our introduced measures have led to a better patient satisfaction. We assume that employee satisfaction plays a major role in increasing patient satisfaction and this has an impact on workers' leave.