Who uses the emergency room services?

Abstract

This study aimed to clarify whether patients attending an emergency room generally had non-urgent problems. A study was made of 2841 patients attending the emergency room of Prince Zaid Ben Al-Hussein military hospital (south Jordan) over a 1-month period using data from the registration book. Patients were classified into four classes of urgency (life-threatening, urgent, non-urgent, trivial). The attendees were mainly children (26.4%). The admission rate was 3.2% and non-urgent conditions accounted for 91% of cases. Much of the use of emergency services was found to be inappropriate, a situation which should be changed.