急診部門在新冠肺炎疫情之下的改變

Changes in Emergency Departments During COVID-19 Pandemics

新冠肺炎的流行，對醫院急診的運作造成極大的衝擊，整個急診的運作模式，都要因應疫情而有所改變，除了看診流程上的改變之外，空間上也要大幅調整，以因應分艙分流的需求。急診應適度使用各種篩檢工具，以便更精確的辨識出確診病人，降低院內感染的風險。此外，醫院應適度降載與增加專責收治容量，以減少確診病人在急診暫留。急診部門不僅是醫院疫情的把關者，更是社區防疫的最前線，在新冠疫情的防控上，醫院急診部門扮演積極而重要的角色。

COVID-19 pandemic brings huge impacts to emergency departments. In the pandemic, all the operations in emergency room should be modified to accommodate the situations. Not only in clinical procedures, the layout of the emergency room should also be changed for quarantine and isolation. In triage, ED should adapt some screening tests to identify infected patients more precisely. Moreover, the hospital should off-load some general clinical services and increase designated capacity in order to unload the ER boarding burden. As a gate keeper of hospital and society, emergency departments play a pivotal role in COVID-19 pandemic.