Abstract

Objective: Because many people rely on emergency clinics, the rate of application to emergency clinics (EC) may serve as an indicator of public health care and health-care system. Determination of the number and features of the patients admitted to the ECs is also required in planning the shifts of the emergency medical personnel who will be employed in ECs. With right planning, both patient satisfaction ratings and cost-effectiveness increase, and waiting time of patients in emergency clinics can be decreased. This study aimed to determine the characteristics of the patients who were admitted to the EC of Erzurum Numune Hospital according to the days, holidays, specific months, and seasons.

Materials and Methods: The number of patients with of- ficial documents for all-day, number of paying patients during and off working hours, monthly number of patients, and the number of the trauma patients admitted to the hospital between Jabnuary 01, 2006 and December 31, 2006, were obtained from the hospital statistics and records of the emergency clinic. This retrospective study was planned to evaluate these parameters.

Results: In 2006, a total of 168.163 patients were admitted to the EC and 54% of these patients were admitted between 5 pm and 8 am. Trauma patients comprised 17% of these patients. Of the patients, 17.5% had no social security and 54% of these patients were admitted between 5 pm and 8 am. The mean total number of the patients, the mean number of trauma patients; the number of paying patients applying during working hours, and the total number of paying patients admitted on public holidays were significantly higher than those applying on work days. The highest rate of application to the EC was in July, and the rate of trauma cases applying to the EC was higher in the summer months.

Conclusion: ES is our highest application rate. The highest rate of application by trauma patients was in May.