A strengths, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis (SWOT) and gap analysis (GA) are great tools that should be used by nurse administrators to help solve problems. GA helps provide a tool to identify the differences between desired and actual practice situations (Davis-Ajami, Costa, and Kulik, 2014). This tool examines aspects of service delivery, quality patient outcomes, evidence-based research, concerns, and expectations (Davis- Ajami et al., 2014). A SWOT analysis examines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to a understand organizational performance in relation to objectives while incorporating stakeholders perception (Davis- Ajami et al., 2014). GA helps provide objective information to guide decision making process and monitor performance. SWOT analysis explores the perspectives from different stakeholder which can be used to help a gap analysis. GA is more useful and comprehensive in providing information …show more content…
There are many articles that describe the best practice for care of psychiatric patients in the ED. In a GA, the evidence collected can help with step 2 and step 3 (Davis-Ajami et al., 2014). One article suggests using a psychiatric fast track service (PFTS) which showed significant improvement in discharges and transfers for psychiatric patients (Okafor et al., 2016). This study found that the hospital saved approximatively half million dollars with implementation of PFTS (Okafor et al., 2016). Under the GA process, this study helps define and identify best practice for psychiatric care in the ED. More research would be necessary to help gather all the evidence that can help solve this problem. Step 3 for GA process can be utilized to create a table of best practice evidence. This can help determine which practice can be implemented and discuss barriers. The evidence-based research on psychiatric care can be utilized in the development of a