DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2014.v02i04.035

Pages: 1325-1329

The emergency department is a core clinical unit and busiest area of a hospital. The experience of patients attending emergency department significantly influences patient satisfaction and the public image of the hospital. Overcrowding in emergency departments is a common problem. In planning emergency services the patient load is very important factor. The objective was to study the utilization of Emergency Services of Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Srinagar with regard to work load, time trends, common diseases, length of stay and admission pattern. A record based retro-prospective method was used to study the clinical records of patients to determine the type of sickness, time trends, length of stay and pattern of admission. Simple linear regression model was used for trend analysis. The study revealed an increasing trend of patients attending ED across time. On an average about 70–80 patients are admitted from the emergency services daily. Overall there was 18.38% increase in five years period. It is expected that patient load will get doubled in 2032-2033. The study of utilization of an ED of a tertiary care hospital will help to focus on future planning both short term and long term so that demand can be met efficiently and effectively in future. Demand can be determined by average daily emergency admissions. Besides, it will also help in addressing other associated problems like overcrowding, future projection of patient load, quality of care, frequency of medical errors, rate of readmissions and referral pattern of patients in ED.