Application Reasons of Adult Patients Admitted to the Family Medicine Outpatient Clinic of Düzce University and Related Factors

Objective: The aim of study is to determine the profile of patients who applied to primary health care services(PHCS) and who have applied to the emergency department(ED) in last six months, the purpose, quality of applications, whether the applications require urgency or not and the reasons why patients prefer ED instead of PHCS. Materials and methods: This is a descriptive study. The study sample consisted of adult patients who applied to Family Medicine Policlinic of a university in March 2019 and who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria and applied to the ED in the last six months. Data collection form prepared by us was applied to patients by us. Results: 150 patients were included in study. 62% of the participants were female and 38% were male. In last 6 months, the mean admission number was 2.45. 67.3% of the patients applied in the evening and night hours, 92% came with their own means, 91.3% were discharged; 5.4% had been hospitalized. The most common reason for admission was UTI. When questioning the reasons of prefer ED instead of PHCS, most of patients stated that they prefer ED because of working hours and time is limited. Conclusion: As a conclusion, the reasons for patients to choose ED emerged as reasons increasing the number of inappropriate applications to the ED. In this case, the presence of appropriate triage systems in EDs may reduce the number of inappropriate applications. At this stage, the use of PHCS can reduce the burden on the EDs