Australian parents mistakenly take children to hospital emergency 9 times out of 10: study
Xinhua, August 4, 2015 Adjust font size:
An Australian research study has shown 90 percent of trips to Emergency Departments (ED) in Victoria state for children aged zero to four years old could have been dealt with by a regular doctor or General Practitioner (GP).
The data published on Tuesday in the Australian Family Physician journal, quantified the staggering percentage of children who were presented to the state's EDs with "non-urgent conditions", which had the side-effect of clogging up vital hospital services.
Non-urgent patients are classified as people who can be treated by a GP. Another "secret shopper study" commissioned by the same group on the topic, published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA), found almost 80 percent of the 250 greater Melbourne GPs surveyed offered same-day care for mildly ill children.
The Royal Children's Hospital partnered Melbourne University for the joint 10-year study. The lead author of both studies, Melbourne University professor Gary Freed, hypothesized why parents were consistently taking their children to the wrong department. Endi