Investigation into the deaths of emergency hospitalization cases in Shenzhen in 2002 / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To identify problems and reduce death and disability rates in emergency care so as to provide basis for upgrading the emergency care network. Methods Questionnaires were filled out with information from the medical records of 1446 cases that had been admitted for emergency care to 60 hospitals of the city's emergency care network and that had died in 2002, a database was set up with Profox 6 0, and a statistical analysis was made with SPSS 11 0. Results The median time for various emergency care procedures was 5 minutes for the issuing and execution of the first medical order respectively and also for the arrival of a senior doctor; 10 minutes for the arrival of the doctor on call; 120 and 180 minutes after admission respectively for case discussion and intra-hospital consultation; 60 minutes after admission for the start of blood transfusion. It was found that some doctors had a poor grasp of emergency care techniques and procedures, the entry of time was not detailed enough in some medical documents, and some rules and regulations failed to be carried out. In addition, differences existed in the spectrum of causes of post-emergency hospitalization death and pre-hospitalization death. Conelusion Improvements need to be made in such aspects of emergency hospitalization care as the detailing of time, the grasp of techniques and the guarantee of quality. And more attention needs to be attached to emergency care.