Hanewinckel Rens, Jongman Henri P, Wallis Lee A, Mulligan Terrence M
Int J Emerg Med. 2010 Jul 9;3(3):143-50. doi: 10.1007/s12245-010-0185-9.
Emergency Medicine (EM) in South Africa is in its earliest stages of development. There is a paucity of data about emergency department (ED) patient demographics, epidemiology, consultation and admission criteria and other characteristics.
This information is absolutely necessary to properly guide the development of EM and appropriate emergency care systems. In order to provide this information, we performed a study in a rural hospital in Paarl, 60 km outside Cape Town.
All patients who were seen in the ED between 1 January 2008 and 31 May 2008 were eligible for our research. We designed a cross-sectional descriptive study and retrieved information from a randomized sample of all consecutive patient charts seen during this period using a 40-point questionnaire (see Appendix 1).
We investigated 2,446 charts, of which 2,134 were suitable for our research The majority (88.2%) of these patients were self-referred. In our sample, 24.1% were children under 12 years old. Almost 20% of patients had a serious pathological condition or were physiologically unstable; 36.0% of all presentations were trauma related. Besides trauma-related problems, gastrointestinal- (21.9%) and respiratory tract- (12.4%) related problems were most common in the ED; 16.5% of the patients were admitted to a ward.
This descriptive epidemiological study provides necessary data that will be used for further needs assessments and for future EM development in Paarl, and can be used as a template in other EDs and hospitals to provide similar data necessary for initial EM development strategy.
南非的急诊医学尚处于发展的早期阶段。关于急诊科患者的人口统计学、流行病学、会诊及入院标准和其他特征的数据匮乏。
这些信息对于正确指导急诊医学及合适的急诊护理系统的发展绝对必要。为了提供此类信息，我们在开普敦以外60公里处帕尔的一家乡村医院开展了一项研究。
2008年1月1日至2008年5月31日期间在急诊科就诊的所有患者均符合我们的研究条件。我们设计了一项横断面描述性研究，并使用一份40项问题的问卷（见附录1），从在此期间连续就诊的所有患者病历的随机样本中获取信息。
我们调查了2446份病历，其中2134份适合我们的研究。这些患者中的大多数（88.2%）是自行前来就诊的。在我们的样本中，24.1%为12岁以下儿童。近20%的患者患有严重病理状况或生理不稳定；所有就诊病例中36.0%与创伤有关。除了与创伤相关的问题外，胃肠道（21.9%）和呼吸道（12.4%）相关问题在急诊科最为常见；16.5%的患者被收入病房。
这项描述性流行病学研究提供了必要的数据，这些数据将用于进一步的需求评估以及帕尔未来的急诊医学发展，并且可作为其他急诊科和医院的模板，以提供急诊医学初始发展战略所需的类似数据。
