Burchard R, Oikonomoulas V, Soost C, Zoremba M, Graw JA. Int. Emerg. Nurs. 2019; 44: 30-34.
Affiliation
Department of Anesthesiology and Operative Intensive Care Medicine (CCM, CVK), Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: jan-adriaan.graw@charite.de.
INTRODUCTION: Patient visits to emergency departments (EDs) increase in many countries. As a result, these facilities are often congested and the socioeconomic burden of growing workload is a well-known problem. In this study, patients' reasons attending an ED with non-emergent needs were analyzed.
METHODS: From October 2015 to March 2016 patients (n = 499), attending the ED of an academic teaching hospital without referral from a General Practitioner (GP) were surveyed regarding circumstances of their visit, a self-assessment of illness-severity, and reasons for choosing the ED instead of a GP.
RESULTS were compared to responses of ED staff (n = 40).
RESULTS: Most patients assessed their case as urgent (patients: 65% vs. ED staff: 28%, p < 0.001) and felt that their medical problem could not to be treated by a GP (74%). However, most patients ranked their injuries as mild (45.7%) or moderate (41.7%). Reasons to prefer an ED instead of a GP were not responded in 80.1% of cases.
CONCLUSION: In contrast to the self-evaluation of patients, ED staff believed that a significant portion of medical problems could be treated by a GP. Understanding patient-centred reasons and the discrepancy between self-perceived emergencies and minor medical problems might help to reduce inappropriate ED-admissions.