Public unaware of walk-in centre services for accidents
Minor injuries can be treated at
walk-in centres, but the public are not aware of this |
The public are unaware of the services offered at accident and emergency-focused walk-in centres, and do not view them as their first choice for the treatment of minor emergencies. This is according to a study reported
recently in the
Emergency Medicine Journal (2007;24:260-4).
The authors sent questionnaires to patients who had attended sites in
England where walk-in centres are co-located with A&E departments
(study group) and to those who had attended sites with a stand-alone
A&E department (control group).
They found that almost 80 per cent of people who were seen at walk-in
centres had actually chosen to attend the co-located A&E department
first (and had been redirected to the walk-in centre). Over a third of
patients who were treated at a walk-in centre said they would have preferred
to be treated at an A&E department, whereas just 13 per cent of patients
seen in a co-located A&E facility, and 12 per cent of the control
group, would have preferred to attend a walk-in centre. More than a third
of patients in each health care setting did not express any preference
about where they were seen. Over half of those attending a walk-in centre
did not realise which kind of facility they were treated in, stating
in their survey response that they had been treated in an A&E department.
Whichever health care setting they were treated at, almost two thirds
of patients rated the care they received as either “very good” or “excellent”.
However, those attending a co-located A&E department were more likely
to be dissatisfied with the levels of cleanliness and privacy and to
report a lack of opportunity to become involved in decision-making or
to discuss anxieties than those attending walk-in centres.
According to the authors, these findings suggest that introducing A&E-focused
walk-in centres has had a limited impact on patients. They query the
logic of locating walk-in centres next to existing A&E departments
because such a venue cannot, by definition, be a more convenient place
for patients to receive treatment.
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Hospital
Pharmacist