Additional reasons for consultation in Primary Care Pediatrics. A multicentric study

Objective: to assess the additional reasons for consultation (“by the way”) and its association with other variables.

Patients and methods: all the patients with appointment, attended by four pediatricians in five health centres during 20 working days in April-May 2008 (n = 950), were included in the study. It is an analytic cross-sectional study. The following variables were recorded in each visit: pediatrician, gender, age, reason for consultation (pathology/bureaucratic), entrance time, kind of companion, number of additional requests (AR) and exit time. For the analysis of the results we used the mean with its standard deviation (SD), chi-square test, independentsamples t test, analysis of variance and logistic regression.

Results: the males comprised 55.3%, being the global age mean 5.3 years (SD = 4.2). Sixteen point three percent of the consultations made AR. By means of logistic regression we proved that the AR were more frequent in bureaucratic consultations and depended on the pediatrician. The average time varied significantly depending on the number of AR: none (8´6´´), one (9´43´´) and two or more (15´12´´).

Conclussions: the reason for consultation and the pediatrician have influence in the AR. Also, the AR increase the consultation time.