There is little doubt that this project has had an enormous impact on the department and served to focus our attention more perceptively on the needs of the “consumer.”

By identifying what the community perceives as their most significant needs, the project has enabled us to target our responses more effectively to patients when they attend the Emergency Department.

Whether it involves enhanced patient communication, provision of information for how the ED functions, attention to comfort issues whilst patients are waiting or addressing specific needs for minority groups such as Aboriginal persons or people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the project has identified the issues and developed and implemented constructive strategies for addressing these needs.

The success of the project, more than anything, is representative of the commitment of staff in the ED to providing the highest quality of care and importantly being open to critical appraisal. Without the openness of staff to critical comment and their enthusiasm to address the issues identified by the community, the project would have been no more than an information gathering exercise.

Staff, by embracing the project's vision have enabled it to be a tool to achieve a level of service provision beyond that which anyone could have predicted achievable with the resources currently available to the department.

By establishing a partnership with the community, the project sets a precedent for the ED in the future.

One of the major outcomes for the project has been the establishment of a Consumer Advocacy Group for the Emergency Department. His group comprises community representatives from a wide range of backgrounds. Their contribution to the continued improvement in service provision and the current redevelopment will be extremely valuable allowing us insight to patient care from the other side of the glass divide.

This group will perform not only a vital function but symbolise the ongoing partnership we have entered as a result of the project with the community. In many respects it represents the continuation of the project, distilled into a single group of community representatives from a diverse range of backgrounds.

The Emergency Department at the Lyell McEwin has much to be proud of and this project and the resulting Consumer Advocacy Group is yet another area in which we are setting the standard in the delivery of emergency health care to the community.