ObjectiveTo investigate the evening outpatient service demand in West China Hospital, in order to provide better service. MethodsUsing self-questionnaire, we investigated 1 734 outpatients and the data were analyzed with SPSS 16.0 software. ResultsA total of 90.7% of the surveyed patients reported that it was necessary to have evening outpatient service, 53.1% of the patients were willing to come to the hospital in the morning, and 4.2% prefer to come to the hospital in the evening. ConclusionEvening outpatient service in large general hospitals is getting high social affirmation. It is helpful to those who are inconvenient or unwilling to come to the hospital during day time, and is a complement for day-time outpatient and emergency outpatient service. Consultation time and resource arrangement in the evening outpatient service should conform to the principle of rational allocation for hospital resources.
ObjectiveTo analyze the characteristics of outpatients in Neurological Department in different periods and to provide guidance on medical decision-making for Neurological Department. MethodOutpatients treated between August and September 1994 (group 1994) and between August and September 2012 (group 2012) in the Department of Neurology of a general hospital were included in our study. Group 1994 had 1 000 consecutive patients; while group 2012 had 18 995 patients excluding those repeat visitors, patients waiting to be treated (including dizziness), patients misdiagnosed to have severe mental diseases (such as schizophrenia), and patients with physical diseases. Then we compared the demographic and disease distribution of patients in the two groups, and performed statistical analysis. ResultsCompared with the year 1994, the year 2012 had more female, less young and more elderly patients (P<0.05). The constituent ratio of neurosis, cerebrovascular disease, internal medicine diseases with nerve damage, peripheral nerve disease, brain post-traumatic syndrome, intracranial space-occupying lesions reduced significantly while headache, epilepsy, extrapyramidal disease (such as Parkinson's disease) increased significantly (P<0.01) with no obvious change of constituent ratio of muscle disease, neuropathic muscular dystrophy, spinal cord, brain atrophy and dementia diseases. ConclusionsThere are significant changes in characteristics of neurology clinical patients between 1994 and 2012. Revelation of these differences can provide evidence for the optimization of outpatient resources allocation and the prevention policy.