Emergency room use by patients from a family practice. Patterns of illness and motivation

Patient visits to hospital Emergency Rooms, often for non-urgent illnesses, have increased phenomenally. Yet, an Emergency Room cannot give satisfactory care for those non-urgent illnesses since its management is fragmented and episodic, the antithesis of family practice. This study of private patients from a family practice explores the total spectrum of illness taken to an Emergency Room over a six-month period and the motivation behind the patients' visits. Diagnoses were not distributed at random but fell into discrete patterns of illness of epidemiological interest and which suggest possibilities for prevention. Emergency Room visits were made at times of self-perceived crisis when the private physician was considered inaccessible, and the hospital came to mind as a convenient and reliable source. The family physician should be aware of the special characteristics of his patients who visit Emergency Rooms and alert to the possibility of prevention of traumatic episodes. He should also consider follow-up care on those patients who make Emergency Room visits, with particular reference to exploring those common psycho-social problems which may have loomed large in the motivation for the hospital visit and yet were not recognized or treated at that time.