Ethnic wait time differences in analgesic administration in the emergency department

Although many studies have documented ethnic disparities in analgesia administration, few have dealt with the wait time for analgesia in the emergency department, despite the fact that the provision of timely and appropriate analgesia should be a primary goal in caring for patients. Inadequate analgesia has been reported for patients presenting with long bone fractures, and a body of evidence exists indicating that ethnic and minority patients may be receiving inadequate pain care when presenting to the emergency department for treatment of long bone fractures. The purpose of the present research was to determine whether wait time differences in pain treatment existed for ethnic and minority adults (18 years old or older) who were admitted to the emergency department suffering from long bone fractures using a quantitative retrospective design. Purposive sampling of medical records of 234 European-American, African-American, and Hispanic patients presenting with long bone fractures from two small Georgia hospitals were analyzed. Although Hispanic, European-American, and African-American patients in this study all reported substantial pain, a significant (p = .005) overall wait time difference was found between Hispanic and European-American patients, with Hispanic patients waiting an average of 102 minutes for the first dose of analgesia, and the European-Americans waiting an average of 67 minutes. Significant (p = .011) wait time differences were also found between Hispanics and European Americans when opioids were ordered and when there was a nurse notation of pain in the record (p = .029).