Saturday night fever? Reasons for referral from health centres to hospitals during weekends in Finland.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to examine the reasons for referral from health centres to hospitals during the weekend in Finland.

METHODS

We conducted a survey of all referrals from general practice on two weekends (30 November to 6 December 1992 and 28 November to 4 December 1994) in central and northern Finland, which covered 72% of the area of the country and one-third of the population. The participants were 178 GPs from public health centres and who made 530 referrals during these weekends. The outcome measures were reasons for referrals by ICPC codes with respect to the characteristics of patients, GPs and practices.

RESULTS

During the weekends studied, 530 patients were referred from out-of-hours work. More male (53%) than female patients (47%) were referred. Out of a total of 530 patients, 213 (40%) were referred to surgery, 139 (26%) to internal medicine, 48 (9%) paediatric medicine, 32 (6%) to neurology, 28 (5%) to both ear, nose and throat (ENT) and psychiatry, 25 (5%) to gynaecology and 18 (4%) to other specialities (ophthalmology, lung disease and cancer departments). Fractures requiring surgery, angina pectoris for which patients were sent to internal medicine and stroke for which patients were sent to other specialities were the most commonly reported reasons for referral. Male patients were referred 12 times more often than females for arrhythmia (atrial fibrillation or tachyarrhythmia); males experienced dislocations eight times more often and fractures three times more often than females.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results point out the need to train GPs about those complaints that most often require a referral to specialist care during the weekend. Future research should focus on those patients who are responsible for the huge gender gap of reasons for referral during weekends.