Objective:

Emergency clinics encounter a wide range of patients. Therefore, the consultation request rate is high. A consultation system is the basic important factor that impacts the operations of emergency clinics. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the consultations requested by the emergency clinic and how they were replied.

Methods:

The consultations requested by the emergency clinic in the Okmeydani Training and Research Hospital between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2015 were screened retrospectively through the database of the hospital’s Information Management System.

Results:

In our hospital, the percentage of patient admission to the emergency clinic was 31.9%. A consultation was requested in 15.5% of all emergency clinic admissions. Regarding the distribution of the consultation requests to the departments, the Internal Medicine Department had the highest percentage with 67.1%. Of the consultation requests, 91.4% were replied on the system. The median reply time was 96 min. The rate of the consultations requested from more than one clinic for the same patient was 11.7%, and the reconsultation request rate from the same clinic within 24 h was 11.8%. There was a statistically significant correlation between the reconsultation requests within 24 h and multiple consultations (p=0.001). We determined that no record was kept in 82% of the consultation requests related to the outcome of the admissions to the emergency clinic.

Conclusion:

To our knowledge, this is the first study that focused on the consultation system of the hospital, where the study was conducted. Data related to the quality and quantity of the consultations were obtained during the study. The evaluation of all data including the consultation systems, which are performed to support the development of the emergency care services and emergency departments in Turkey, can only be done with a regular recording and analysis of the data.

Keywords: Consultation, emergency clinic, emergency medicine, waiting period