ABSTRACT
The emergency medicine system absorbs much of the burden of the chronic problems facing health care in the United States today: an increasingly unhealthy populace, variability in access to primary care, and severe resource shortages (Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the US, 2006). Studies of emergency department (ED) patient’s length of stay, ED overcrowding, and limits on ED surge capacity often examine how these factors lead to poor care processes and poor outcomes for patients (for example, Chalfin, et al., 2007; Pines et al., 2007; Viccellio, et al., 2009). As a result, emergency medicine, and in particular the emergency department, presents an excellent natural laboratory in which to study how health care personnel in different units adapt in resilient (or less than resilient) ways (Wears, et al., 2008; Wears and Woods, 2007; Wears, 2011; Nugus et al., 2011).
