Abstract:
The morbidity and mortality trends are changing and demands new service delivery
priorities_ Up to late 1980's patients were directly admitted from out patient department to
the respective wards. Since then separate accident and emergency service units with direct
admissions has been established in some state hospitals. However there was no type plan or
recommended minimum resources for these emergency units. Treatment protocols and
standard operation procedures used varied from hospital to hospital. Ministry of Health has
recently identified improvement of accident and emergency services as one of the top
priorities. In 2002 Ministry of Health established a separate Accident and Emergency unit at
Teaching Hospital Kurunegala in order to provide good quality emergency services to the
patients was selected for this study. Data on selected sociodemographic characteristics and
morbidity pattern, timeliness of service and patient's level of satisfaction were collected
from patients using interviewer administered questioners. Another sample of fifty (50)
members were selected from Accident and Emergency unit staff by using stratified random
sampling technique in order to collect data for making recommendations of future
improvements to Accident and Emergency unit Teaching Hospital Kurunegala. For
continuous variables, mean, mode, median and standard deviations were computed. For
categorical variables frequencies and 95 percent confidence interval were calculated. To
determine the patient's level of satisfaction five point Lickert Scale that ranged from - 2 to
+2 was used. Results of this study showed that the age of patients admitted ranged from
neonates to 90 years with mean age of 38.57 ± 22.06SD.
