ABSTRACT

Primary Health Care is defined as, the health institutions and the produced services where diagnostic procedures and treatment of 95% of admitted patients are performed, besides referring patients to secondary and tertiary hospitals in certain circumstances and serving preventive health care. In this study we assess two-month patient profiles and develop recommendations based on the data obtained from our outpatient clinics in a tertiary hospital.

This is a cross-sectional study in which 1708 patients whom were referred to a tertiary hospital family medicine outpatient clinic in Izmir between 1.11.2015 and 31.12.2015 were evaluated retrospectively. Age, gender, smoking behavior, admission requests, diagnoses, consultation, laboratory tests and prescription data of patients were obtained.

The mean age of patients enrolled in the study was 47.11±16.70 years and 545 (68.2%) patients were women. The average of application per patient was 1.5±1.2 to a family medicine outpatient clinic in a tertiary hospital. The most common admission was the demand for physical examination with 500 patients (62.6%). The most common complaints in the physical examination group were stomach related complaints (15%), abdominal pain (12.4%) and body pain (11.0%). Among the 500 patients, 398 (79.6%) were investigated by laboratory tests, 289 (57.8%) were prescribed, and 108 (21.6%) were referred to other clinics. The rheumatology clinic was the most commonly referred to with 22.2% (n:24) of patients.

It is important to give an appropriate education during resident training and encourage continuing medical education about monitoring and management of chronic diseases, vaccines, child and pregnancy surveillance issues and other commonly observed complaints in order to provide quality primary care services.

Keywords: Family medicine, outpatient clinics, diagnose, frequency