WESTERN CAPE EMERGENCY CENTRES
The whole department.In your hand.
Every wait, every register, every triage score — live, on the phone you already carry, signed in with the Hectis login you already have. The floor stops being something you can only see from the one terminal at the desk.
An emergency centre is a queue with four waits in it
Nobody asks how many patients are in the department. They ask who has been waiting longest, who is sickest, and who is ready to go but still here. Those are four different questions, and they are four columns.
- 01
Waiting for triage
Arrived, not yet seen — and how long they have been standing there.
- 02
Waiting for a clinician
Triaged and queued the way an emergency centre actually queues: acuity first, then time waited.
- 03
Waiting for disposition
Seen and worked up, waiting on the decision — admit, discharge, refer or transfer.
- 04
Waiting for exit
Decided, but still in the department. The wait nobody counts and everybody feels.
- Emergency registerThe register itself, current.
- Arrivals pendingInbound transfers and ambulances, before they are through the door.
- Exits last 5 daysRecent departures, for the round and the handover.
- Jimmy registerAlongside the rest instead of somewhere else.
- DashboardLoad across the whole department at a glance.
The score arriveswith the observations
Mobility, respiratory rate, heart rate, systolic pressure, temperature, AVPU and trauma. Seven numbers, weighted and summed. Enter them and the TEWS total and its colour appear as you type — before you commit anything, while the patient is still in front of you.
- Not advice. It scores what you entered — it does not recommend a category, a disposition or a treatment.
- Not a substitute for the triage nurse’s judgement, which routinely and correctly overrides a number.
- Not a second chart. What you enter goes into Hectis; there is nothing here to reconcile later.
- 7+REDEmergency
- 5–6ORANGEVery urgent
- 3–4YELLOWUrgent
- 0–2GREENRoutine
Five things that change the shift
- 01
The whole department, on one screen
Every wait, every register, live — not a summary someone typed up an hour ago. Who is sickest, who has waited longest, who is ready to leave.
- 02
The score arrives with the numbers
Enter the observations and the TEWS total and its triage colour appear as you type. A transposed digit gets caught while the patient is still in front of you.
- 03
Your own Hectis login
The username and password you already use at the terminal. No second account to be issued or approved, no new password to forget — and everything you enter is recorded under your name, because it is you.
- 04
Coded once, counted properly
Search the diagnosis, pick it, and the episode carries both SNOMED CT and ICD-10. The clinician and the coder stop re-typing each other’s version of the same thing.
- 05
On the phone already in your pocket
Triage at the trolley, disposition at the bedside, the board in the tea room. The department stops being something you can only see from one desk.
A shift, end to end
- 19:02
Handover
You pick up the board before you pick up the first patient — eleven in the department, two waiting on triage, one inbound.
- 21:35
The trolley
Observations entered at the patient, not remembered and typed at the desk twenty minutes later.
- 01:20
The quiet hour
You clear dispositions from wherever you are sitting, and the queue shortens in front of you.
- 06:45
Handover, again
The register is already current, so the morning team inherits the department rather than a reconstruction of it.