Research Theme: Maternal & Child Health

Research Title: The Determinants of attendance for self-referred parents of children presenting with minor illness at an Emergency Department (ED)?

Research Interests: Child health, Emergency Department, Research in Healthcare

Supervisors: Dr Mark Linden, Dr Fiona Lynn, Dr Jennifer McGaughey

Email: abutun01@qub.ac.uk

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmet-butun-1aa949103?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ahmet_Butun

Project Summary

Many parents bring their children with minor illness to Emergency Department rather than their GP or other primary care services. Parents of children with minor illness use emergency department inappropriately. In other words, they can treat their child at home or visit their GP or primary care services. The usage of EDs for minor illness might cause many problems such as service workload, patient density and quality of care. This project might provide a deeper understanding of parents’ rationale for deciding to attend an ED directly rather than visit GP or other primary healthcare services.

The project objectives are as follows;

• To enhance understanding of the rationale of parents’ attending an emergency department with children with minor illness by a meta-synthesis of qualitative data.
• To identify determinants that lead parents to use an ED rather than visit their GP or primary care services.