Evaluation of patients applying to the emergency department of a state hospital

The research was conducted as a retrospective descriptive study in order to evaluate of patients admitted to the emergency department of a public hospital. The data of the study, were obtained by examining the records of 11518 patients over the age of 18 who applied to the emergency department between 01.01.2019 and 31.12.2019. The examination of the data took one month between 08.11.2020 and 08.12.2020. Of the patients admitted to the emergency department, 55.7% were male and 35.5% were between the ages of 45-64. It was determined that male patients (55.7%) applied to the emergency department more frequently. It was determined that 72.1% of the patients applied to the emergency clinic, most of them had treatment in the yellow area (91.8%) and 53.3% of these applications occurred between 08.00-15.59 hours. Headache (5.0%), sore throat (4.6%) and cough (4.1%) were the first complaints in admission. The most common diagnoses in patients are Acute Upper Respiratory Tract Infection, Undefined (14.3%) and Soft Tissue Disorder, Unidentified, found as Other (10.7%). It was observed that female patients mostly applied for upper respiratory tract infection (12.7%) and male patients due to soft tissue disorders (13.3%). As a result, patients applied to the emergency outpatient clinic mostly because of diseases that could be treated in primary health care centers or outpatient clinics. In order to reduce unnecessary crowding in the emergency department of the district state hospital, it would be appropriate to examine the reasons for frequent admissions and the triggering factors.