One year experience at the Emergency Unit of the Children's ...

Paediatric emergency35ber of attendance may interfere with the regular functioningof a PD, over-burdening the Paediatricians onduty who have to attend out-patients 24 hours a day, inaddition to the emergencies in the PD.The room of thePaediatrician on duty becomes in this way a veritablePaediatric Emergency-Unit (PEU) working just like aPED. However, compared with the PED, the PEU isnot autonomous and does not have its own individualstaff. In addition, some PEUs, just like a PED, have afew beds for a short clinical observation.In the background of this scenario, we haveanalysed the activity of the PEU of our Department inthe first year of its functioning.Material and MethodsThe information on patients of the PEU of ourDepartment concerned the first year of activity from1 st October 1998 to 30 th September 1999 and it wasretrospectively obtained from the clinical notes. Everychild admitted to the PEU was first attended by anurse who filled out a form detailing the vital parameters(heart beat, respiratory rate, body temperature,blood pressure), age, body weight and height. Notriage was made. The child was directly examined by aPaediatrician on duty. At the end of the visit, the childwas either discharged with a letter for the familyphysician or he/she was admitted to one of 6 beds adjoinedto the PEU for a short observation period.More serious cases were directly admitted to beds inthe appropriate specialized ward of the PD.The following data was collected by two of theAuthors (CZ and TG): the child’s chronological age,place of origin (town or province), ethnic group, motivefor consultation, time and day of admission, diagnosis,and destination.For statistical analysis t-student, ANOVA, chisquare,Pearson-linear correlation tests were performed.cent were males (males/females ratio 3:1). The averageage was 3.9±3.5 years (range 1.2 months - 19 years).Eighty-seven per cent of the patients were Italian citizensand 13% belonged to an ethnic minority. Ninety-threeper cent of the patients arrived directly in thePEU without passing through the General emergencydepartment of the Hospital.The attendance rate increased progressively fromOctober with a peak in February and progressivelydecreased from March to September (Figure 1). Thenumber of daily attendances increased from Mondayto Sunday according to a r of 0.59 (p