ABSTRACT

We aimed to demonstrate to what extent do the right information in patients’ inter-hospital transfers due to the intensive care indications.

In this study, 38 patients who applied to our general intensive care unit (ICU) from the other hospitals were included. The demographic data of patients, declarations before ICU admission and diagnosis after admission, the reason and accuracy of the transfer, the overall stay time and the treatments in ICU were recorded.

Of all the patients, 17 of them (44.7%) were male and 21 of them (55.3%) were female. Of the people who informed the patients 50% were research assistants, 34.2% of them were medical specialists and 15.8% were paramedics. The most common causes of transfer were found to be invasive hemodynamic monitoring (52.6%), mechanical ventilation (36.8%) and the need for dialysis (10.5%). As the patients were evaluated after admission to ICU, the 71.1% of the information about patients was found to be incomplete and/or misleading. The most common health problems that found to be not reported during acceptance were chronic systemic diseases (25.8%), emergent cardiac pathologies (16.1%), malignancy (12.9%), active infection (12.9%), psychiatric disorders (12.9%) and neurological deficiencies (%9,7).

This study revealed that the most of the patient transfers were made improperly with incomplete or misleading information and without the tertiary care ICU indication. In order to use ICU effectively, we believe that an efficient system which provides correct information should be used during inter-hospital patient transfer.

Keywords: Intensive care, information, triage