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Indicated trauma emergency department utilization - A comparison between patients' self-assessment and professional
Rene Burchard1, Vasileios Oikonomoulas2, Christian Soost3
1Department of Health, University of Witten/Herdecke, Witten, Germany; Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery, Kreisklinikum Siegen, Siegen, Germany; School of Science and Technology, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany.
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.
