SPAN@DEM (SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network @ Department of Emergency Medicine)—A Pioneer in Emergency Department-Specific Patient Advocacy: Development Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Launched in January 2022, the SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network at the Department of Emergency Medicine (SPAN@DEM) represents the first emergency department-specific advocacy group in Singapore. This initiative marks a significant advancement in local patient advocacy efforts because it employs a shared collaborative model to address the needs and concerns of patients within the unique context of the emergency department environment. SPAN@DEM emerged in recognition of the limitations of existing cluster-level advocacy groups, which are inadequate to address specific challenges inherent to the fast-paced, high-pressure nature of the emergency department. Objective: In this article, we describe the establishment of SPAN@DEM, discuss the challenges and considerations encountered, and reflect on lessons gleaned through this journey. Methods: A start-up committee, comprising two emergency physicians and four patient advocates, was convened to delineate the processes required to form a new patient advocacy group. Key features of SPAN@DEM include co-leadership by an emergency physician and a patient advocate, and diverse membership composition with equal representation from health care professionals and patient advocates. SPAN@DEM convenes quarterly with informal luncheons during meetings to foster open communication between advocates and health care staff. Membership is voluntary and motivated solely by altruism, and all members are required to participate in mandatory advocacy training to empower them to provide more actionable insights. Results: Since its inception, SPAN@DEM has implemented several initiatives such as PIKACHU (Project to Improve next-of-Kin Advice, Communications and Helpful Updates)-a suite of quality improvement measures that resulted in improved patient and next-of-kin satisfaction rates and reduced formal communication-related complaints-and Digital FAQ-an online web-based resource designed to clarify emergency department processes for patients. SPAN@DEM advocates have also contributed to the planning, design, and transition to the new Emergency Medicine Building. More importantly, SPAN@DEM has fostered a cultural shift towards patient-centered care, with the department now routinely engaging patient advocates in decisions affecting patient and next-of-kin experience. Conclusions: SPAN@DEM exemplifies the value of specialized emergency department-specific advocacy groups in advancing patient-centered emergency care. This model may serve as an exemplar for other health care institutions seeking to enhance patient advocacy efforts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".