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1 – 1 of 1Azar Hadadi, Patricia Khashayar, Mojgan Karbakhsh and Ali Vasheghani Farahani
– The purpose of this paper is to identify the main reasons for discharge against medical advice (DAMA) in the emergency department (ED) of a teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the main reasons for discharge against medical advice (DAMA) in the emergency department (ED) of a teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran.
Design/methodology/approach
This cross-sectional study was conducted on all the patients who left the ED of a referral teaching hospital against medical advice (AMA) in 2008. A questionnaire was filled out for each patient to determine the reasons behind patient leaving AMA.
Findings
In total, 12.8 percent of the patients left the hospital AMA. Dissatisfaction with being observed in the ED, having a feeling of recovery and hospital personnel encouraging patients to leave the hospital were the main reasons for leaving the hospital AMA.
Practical implications
Like many other centers, the results showed that poor communication skill and work overload were the main contributing factors to DAMA. The center managed to improve patient satisfaction and thus lowered DAMA rates following this study. Considering the similarities reported in the reports and that of other studies, it could be concluded that policy makers in other centers can also benefit from the results to adopt effective approaches to reduce DAMA rate.
Originality/value
To the knowledge no study has evaluated the rate and the reasons behind DAMA in the Iranian EDs.
Details