Analysis of Consultations that are Requested from the Emergency Department

Objective: Emergency departments (EDs) are medical units that provide healthcare to patients with diseases that have sudden onset symptoms, patients with disorders, or patients with injuries that need immediate care on a 24/7 basis. In addition to emergency patients mentioned above, EDs provide healthcare services to patients who might have an emergency medical situation later, even if their situation is not emergent initially. Emergency medicine physicians perform all resuscitative interventions to stabilize patients, identify patients who need intensive care in an undifferentiated patient pool, and provide the most appropriate treatment to make them suitable for general ward care.
Material and Methods: The current study is a retrospective and descriptive study that was conducted by analyzing the computer-based patient records of all patients who were admitted to University of Health Sciences Turkey, Baþakþehir Çam and Sakura City Hospital’s Emergency Service between 09.01.2020 and 10.01.2020. All 22,459 patients who were admitted to the ED within one month were included in the study. Age and gender characteristics of the patients who received consultation, departments that made the consultation, and hospitalization rates were determined.
Results: The total number of patients who were admitted to the ED between 09.01.2020 and 10.01.2020 was 22,459, the number of consultations was 4,290, and the number of hospitalizations was 1,405. Of the patients for whom consultations were requested, 2,577 were male and 1,713 were female. The mean age was 45.8 years. Of the 22,459 patients who were admitted, 1,786 (7.9%) were triaged with red tags, 9,994 (44.2%) were triaged with yellow tags, and 10,729 (47.9%) were triaged with green tags. The consultations were requested most frequently for orthopedics (522), pulmonology (501), and internal medicine (423). Furthermore, the list continues with general surgery (386); cardiology (335); ophthalmology (321); neurology (299); otorhinolaryngology (250); neurosurgery (204); obstetrics (138); infectious diseases (122); psychiatry (112); thoracic surgery (108); pediatric surgery (79); cardiovascular surgery (73); plastic surgery (71); anesthesiology and reanimation (140); and urology (55) departments. Of the patients for whom consultations were requested, 35.9% were hospitalized in general wards or intensive care units, whereas 64.1% were discharged.
Conclusion: This study shows that the number of daily admissions to the emergency room is very high, and it is increasing every day. In order to not disrupt the workflow in the ED, the consultations should be responded quickly. Moreover, if possible, consultants from the high demanding departments, such as orthopedics, pulmonologist, internal diseases, general surgery, cardiology, and ophthalmology should ensure that separate doctors (doctors whose only duty would be to attend patients in their respective departments) are on call for the ED.