Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA
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Emerg Med Australas · Aug 2007
Multicenter StudyWhy patients attend emergency departments for conditions potentially appropriate for primary care: reasons given by patients and clinicians differ.
To compare reasons identified by clinical staff for potential primary care attendances to the ED with those previously identified by patients. ⋯ These data confirm that clinician perspectives on reasons for potential primary care patients' use of ED differ quite markedly from the perspectives of patients themselves. Those differences do not necessarily represent a punitive or blaming philosophy but will stem from the very different paradigms from which the two protagonists approach the interactions, reflecting the standard tension in a provider - consumer relationship. If policy is to be developed to improve system use and access, it must take both perspectives into account with respect to redesign, expectations and education.