Children who go to a general emergency department for the treatment of acute otitis media may not get the same quality care as they would in either a children’s hospital emergency or a pediatric clinic — especially after hours.
The difference could be attributed to the fact that general hospitals do not have as many emergency physicians trained in pediatrics, say researchers who compared the treatment given in different clinical settings.
Jonathon Maguire, a senior medical student from the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, presented the findings at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS). The researchers reviewed the medical charts of 573 children who had been treated for acute otitis media after hours, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.
Researchers focused on after-hours treatment because the children needing attention at these times would not be seeing their primary care provider. “We wanted to know what their care would be like in an alternate setting,” he said. The study population included 202 children treated in a pediatric emergency department at a large teaching hospital, 209 in an after-hours pediatric clinic, and 162 in a general emergency department in a large downtown hospital. The mean age was 2.5 years (range six months to five years), and 54 percent were boys. All patients were treated between 1998 and 2000.
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