Emergency Department – Best Practices for Success

The Emergency Department should be one of your first call points in any hospital. Here is a bit of information about the department and a few tips and tricks to help you get in front of the right people.

Getting an initial meeting:
As with any department getting the product in front of the decision maker is key. In the ED, that person is the Medical Director, this is a physician, either an MD or a DO. If you don’t know who they are you can often find their name on the hospitals website if you search Emergency Medicine or even Medical Director of Emergency Medicine. Sometimes they will have a short bio or they will be quoted in an article about the ED.

Each month the ED has a “Faculty Meeting” this meeting is led by the Medical Director and all of the ED physicians in the department attend. The Medical Director’s admin typically organizes the meetings and attends them, takes attendance, records meeting minutes etc. When you reach out to the Medical Director ask if you can have 5 minutes to present OMNI-STAT at the start of their monthly faculty meeting. If agreed, his admin will help you coordinate. If you need help, I will come and present. If you have not done this type of meeting before, I suggest we do it together. This can sometimes even be done via zoom now if they are not having in person meetings.

Furthermore, if the hospital is part of a health system, they will have a monthly faculty meeting for all of the medical directors of the EDs throughout the system. Even if they all purchase separately, this is a great way to introduce the products system wide.

Once the product is in:
If you are lucky enough to have existing customers in your territory this is another great way to get back in front of the ED doctors to remind them about the product. I will almost always receive a new order after conducting a faculty presentation in an existing account.

Once it’s in, doing an in-service is also a good idea. Ask who the Nurse Educator is and work with him/her to ensure everyone is properly trained on the product. If our product is replacing something they are typically the ones to communicate that to the department and have responsibility to ensure it is used properly. Understand also, that in some cases, only physicians can pull OMNI-STAT and Celox. In other instances, RNs can pull the gauzes but generally only physicians can pull the granules. Make sure before you conduct an in-service find out who can use it. Also, if the hospital is stocking it, find out where it is kept so you can tell folks where to grab it from. Educating the nurses and techs can still be valuable even if they can’t pull product because they will remind the physician that it’s there.

Make sure you know who the ED purchaser is. They are the person responsible for ordering for that department. Suggest par levels to increase the amount of product on the shelf to ensure product is readily available. Large injuries or major events like shootings, or motor vehicle accidents can involve multiple casualties. They don’t want to be short on product when they need it most!

Other important considerations in message selection:
The power of the product to control major arterial bleeding from gun shot and stab wounds is a great way to introduce the product particularly at Level 1 and Level 2 Trauma Centers, but not all EDs see those types of injuries, they do however all see: Bleeding Fistulas, Dialysis Patients Bleeding from their shunt, Fingertip lacerations, avulsions, and skin tears on elderly patients on anticoagulants that are difficult or impossible to suture. Lastly, remember that ED physicians aren’t surgeons, they do not perform surgeries but they do perform minor procedures and suture. Don’t insult them by asking what type of surgeries they do where they see the most bleeding because they will tell you to go ask a surgeon. Instead, ask them what are the most frequent types of problematic bleeds they see in the ED. Get them thinking then make some suggestions if they say, it’s not really a big problem here. When you talk about the types of bleeds above a lightbulb will go off. Remember they are short staffed, if you can control bleeding faster that’s less time someone is sitting bedside holding pressure. You are allowing them to more effectively manage staffing resources and increase patient throughput.

Hope this helps and as always thanks for your continued efforts.