A Casualty Survey.

Abstract

The writer has, for many years, been interested in assessing the place of the general practitioner in the spectrum of medical care. The casualty departments of hospitals are one obvious point where much overlapping occurs between the work of the general practitioner and the hospital. The Upjohn Fellowship enabled the writer to conduct a survey of the work at the casualty department of the General Hospital, Birmingham. This survey was concerned mainly with establishing what proportion of the patients attending the casualty department could have been cared for by their own practitioners and in this group of patients establishing why, in fact, this had not happened. During this survey, from its inception to its completion, the writer had the most cordial reception and co-operation from the staff of the casualty department. An inevitable result of carrying out this survey was an automatic postgraduate course in minor surgery and the treatment of minor casualties. The casualty department is attached to a general hospital in the centre of Birmingham. The department has an open front door with no filtering or selection of new patients. All who come are registered and seen by a duly qualified practitioner. There are the usual follow-up and fracture clinics found in most such departments.