All issues > Volume 50(7); 2007

Original Article

Korean J Pediatr. 2007;50(7):622-628. Published online July 15, 2007.

An analysis of one-year experience of pediatric observation unit: The first report in Korea

Jee Young JY Lee¹, Ui-Yoon UY Choi¹, Soo Young SY Lee¹, Ji-Young JY Lee², Byong Chan BC Lee³, Hui Sung HS Hwang¹, Hye Rin HR Mok¹, Dae Chul DC Jeong¹, Seung Yun SY Chung¹, Jin Han JH Kang¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine The Catholic University of Korea
²Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea
³Department of Pediatrics, Sung-Se Hospital

Correspondence Dae Chul DC Jeong ,Email: dcjeong@catholic.ac.kr

Abstract

Purpose
: While pediatric observation units (POU) have become a common practice in hospitals throughout developed countries, there has been no report about POUs in Korea so far. The aims of this study were to analyze our one-year's experience of the POU and to decide which disease entities are suitable for the POU.
Methods
: All children admitted from March 2006 to February 2007 to the POU at the Department of Pediatrics in Our Lady of Mercy Hospital were included in this study. Data were collected from retrospective reviews of their medical records.
Results
: There were a total of 1,076 POU admissions. Median age of patients was 2.4 years and median length of hospital stay 14.0 hours. The most common diagnoses were gastroenteritis (42.7%), pharyngotonsillitis (19.1%), bronchiolitis (7.8%), pneumonia (5.5%) and febrile seizure (5.2%). Overall, 7.5% of the POU patients required subsequent inpatient admissions due to hospital stays of longer than 48 hours. The disease entities that were most likely to require inpatient admission were pneumonia (17.0%), febrile seizure (12.5%) and asthma (11.5%). Diseases that allowed successful discharge from the POU were gastroenteritis (4.6%), upper respiratory tract infection (5.8%), such as otitis media and pharygnotonsillitis and seizure disorder (6.4%). Compared with the previous year when the POU was not in operation, there was a statistically significant reduction in the average length of hospital stays (from 4.69 to 3.75 days), as well as a rise in the bed turnover rate (from 78.8 to 98.2 patients/ bed).
Conclusion
: Our study shows that the POU is efficient for the management of children with certain acute illnesses. Based on this study, we suggest that the POU be used as a new modality which links between the outpatient, inpatient, and emergency departments in the field of pediatrics in Korea.

Keywords :Pediatrics, Day care, Length of stay