Abstract:

Objective: Much of the emergency departments’ current workload consists of medically non urgent patients who may also easily be cured in other outpatient departments. This has a major negative effect on not only service quality but also service presentation and staff satisfaction. There is a need for more information on emergency department usage characteristics in order to obtain essential data to put together an effi cient and superior emergency health framework in our country. The aim of this study was to evaluate the patients who presented to the pediatric emergency department of a training and research hospital within a three-month period.Material and Methods: A total of 14536 cases that presented to our pediatric emergency department between February and April 2013 were investigated retrospectively.Results: The most frequent reason for presenting to the emergency department was upper respiratory infections. April was the month with the highest number of presentations, and 16.00 to 24.00 was the shift when most patients presented. Only 1.6% of the patients were hospitalized while 66.7% received a prescription. Conclusion: Patients do not use the emergency departments with an urgent problem. They prefer emergency departments because of their accessibility and administrational features, even if using the primary care service is more appropriate

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