DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM CONSULTATION PROCESS FACED BY EMERGENCY PHYSICIANS: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

Objective: To discuss the difficulties that emergency physicians face during the consultation.
Materials and Methods: The included physicians were reached by e-mail groups, social media, and one-to-one contact,
and electronic questionnaires including 22 questions were filled by the physicians. The questionnaire was designed to be
filled anonymously.
Results: Altogether 307 emergency physicians participated in our study. The mean age of the participants was
(36.7±7.64) years, among whom 53.1% were males and 46.9% were females. Pulmonary disease (46.6%) were the
branches with the highest frequency where the emergency physicians have difficulties in consultations. The majority of the
physicians’ problems were concentrated on weekends (76.2%) and between 24:00-08:00 (67.1%). In addition, 73% of
emergency physicians had verbal conflict with consulting physicians, and 16.3% had physical conflict.
Conclusions: For the consultation process to be more professional, both requesting and consulting physicians should
be educated. In addition, it is possible to minimize problems by increasing mutual communication skills.