Demand characterization and looking for a children’s emergency care: opinion of parents and legal guardians

Abstract

Health services are organized hierarchically in order to obtain better resolution and universal access. However, in practice, this has not occurred due to the limitation of services in primary care, and the gateway has been hospitals, through the ready attendance, emergency rooms or clinics because many believe it is the fastest and most effective form of care. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify the reasons for parents/guardians to choose the ready attendance service for the assistance of their children. It is a descriptive and cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach. The sample consisted of 380 parents/guardians, the collection site was a children's health care center in Londrina, from June to August 2013. After analyzing the data, it was observed that 73.9% of the population resorted directly to the ready attendance service. From the small portion that searched for other hospitals, only 12.6% were sent to the ready attendance service. The main complaint was fever with 25.7% and cases of seizures appeared in last place with 0.4%. The present study revealed a great demand of the population studied by ready attendance services instead of primary care, with complaints often solvable in primary care, which confirms the deficiency in priority principles by the Unified Health System such as accessibility and response capacity of primary health services.