Young men are placing the biggest demands on hospital emergency departments, a new study presented yesterday suggests.
The study at Cork University Hospital which reviewed more than 218,000 attendances at the hospital's A&E department between 2002 and 2006 found that the biggest attenders were men aged between 15 and 35 years.
Tony McNamara, the hospital's manager, said the review had clearly shown that contrary to popular opinion, the elderly were not placing the biggest demands on the A&E unit.
He believed the findings would be typical of attendance patterns at all teaching hospitals.
Mr McNamara said the reason young men were placing such a big demand on the department may be due to trauma such as sports injuries and lifestyle factors. However, he said this needed to be studied further. "They exert an extraordinary demand on the emergency department," he said.
Furthermore, he said, the review found those under the age of 40 years largely self-refer to the A&E department rather than see a GP first, whereas older patients tend to see their GP first.
In addition, while people may have expected the unit to be busiest in the winter months, the review found it was busiest between April and September. It was also busiest between 9am and 8pm.
Mr McNamara presented the findings at a health conference in Croke Park, Dublin, yesterday.
Meanwhile, the organisation representing A&E consultants across the State has issued new health and safety standards for all emergency departments.
Dr James Binchy, secretary of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine, said emergency departments that failed to meet those safety standards should be reported to the Health and Safety Authority (HSA).
Dr Binchy said the HSA had the power to close down building sites which were unsafe; similarly, if A&E units could not be made safe by adhering to the new standards, they should be closed.
The association said the HSA undertook a risk-assessment of A&E units in 2005, found "glaring deficiencies" and issued recommendations that had yet to be acted on in many departments. It said it was due to the "inertia" of the HSE in acting on these recommendations that it had decided to issue its own health and safety standards for A&E units.
The standards document states that emergency departments here are generally poorly designed and have poor risk control standards with regard to fire, infection control, violence and aggression and manual handling.
As a result of persistent overcrowding, both patients and staff are exposed to "significant risk on a daily basis".
The standards state each A&E should have at least one isolation room for patients presenting with TB and each unit should also have at least one side room to isolate patients with suspected infectious diarrhoeal illness.
There should also be at least one toilet for every 10 patients in the unit, and A&Es should be cleaned fully twice daily.
It adds that each A&E must have visible 24-hour security and CCTV, lifting aids to lift patients, and its fire exit doors must be clearly signed, unobstructed and unlocked. At times these have been blocked by trolleys.
The HSE disputed the suggestion that it had not implemented the HSA's recommendations.
A spokeswoman said it had come up with a framework for senior managers to develop safety management systems in their areas and a working group on aggression and violence in the workplace had been established.
A lot of work was also being done in relation to infection control, the HSE spokeswoman said.