[Expert consensus on the construction of emergency department in Chinese county hospitals]

County-level hospitals, as medical and health centers in the counties, are mainly responsible for providing medical care for common and frequently-occurring diseases as well as rescuing acute critical patients. In 2018, editors of the Chinese Journal of Emergency Medicine evaluated the current situation of the emergency departments of county-level hospitals and found an unbalanced, inadequate, irregular, and unstable status existed among them. In order to provide developmental principles and constructional goals for the emergency departments of county-level hospitals, which located in different regions and with uneven foundations, Emergency Medical Branch of Chinese Medical Association particularly formulated this expert consensus. It not only suits for county-level general hospitals but also offers reference to the traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and specialized hospitals. The consensus includes: duties and scope of the emergency department, flow layout, equipment configuration and technology, job setting and staffing, management of emergency department, information construction and centralized construction. Construction specifications are divided into basic standards and recommended standards. The terms in the text are basic standards, and recommendations are improvements on basic standards. The basic standards are mainly suitable for the 2 Grade general hospitals, and the recommended standards mainly for 3 Grade general hospitals.