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Caregiver reasons for tertiary health‐care seeking for children aged ≤12 years
Author(s) -
Yaprak Seval,
Bulut Ulku,
Okudan Yunus Emre,
Gokdemir Ozden,
Colak Muhteber,
Yıldırım Ediz,
Guldal Dilek
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
pediatrics international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.49
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1442-200X
pISSN - 1328-8067
DOI - 10.1111/ped.12930
Subject(s) - medicine , referral , presentation (obstetrics) , tertiary care , family medicine , test (biology) , pediatrics , outpatient clinic , health care , university hospital , tertiary referral hospital , descriptive statistics , retrospective cohort study , paleontology , mathematics , radiology , economics , biology , economic growth , statistics
Background In Turkey, a mandatory referral system is not used. Caregivers, for their children, present directly to health‐care providers at all levels. This allows patients to present directly to university hospitals. In this study, reasons for university hospital‐treatment seeking by caregivers for child health problems is discussed. Methods This was a cross‐sectional descriptive study at Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine, Izmir, Turkey, of 235 caregivers whose children were admitted to the outpatient clinic of the General Pediatrics Department between 4 and 11 April 2013. They completed a questionnaire on demographic data and reasons for presentation to the university hospital. Mann–Whitney U ‐test was used to compare group means, and Pearson chi‐squared test for ratios between groups. P <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results A total of 54.5% of participants lived far from the hospital. The most frequent complaints involved the respiratory tract, among which the most frequent complaint was cough. Time from symptom onset to presentation was ≥7 days in 58.3% of patients, and 48.9% had never presented to another institution. The most common reason for choosing the university hospital was the availability of the necessary tests (88.1%). Conclusions Despite common use of primary health‐care systems, with regard to tertiary hospital presentation, the most important factors for preferring tertiary hospital presentation were caregiver trust in tertiary hospital resources for diagnosis and treatment.