Abstract

Background: The hospital emergency department (ED) is one of the most important components of the healthcare delivery system. This study aims to investigate the public awareness of the Emergency Rooms (ERs) in Saudi Arabia, what the public knows about the provided services, and if they know the difference between the outpatient clinics and the ERs.
Methodology: It is a cross-sectional descriptive community-based study, carried out on 977 participants from all age groups, in different areas of Saudi Arabia, from 1 January to 31 July 2019. Data were collected by filling the pre-designed online questionnaire. We utilized the SPSS program version 16. The X2 test was used as a test of significance, and differences considered significant at P value less than 0.05.
Results: Most of the participants (87.5%) reported that they knew the difference between the outpatient clinic and ER. The majority (68.1%) of subjects said that ERs mean rapid and unplanned medical care. Regarding evaluation of the provided services in ERs; 32.5% of the cases said it was satisfactory followed by 28.5% good, 19.8% excellent, 10.2% accepted and 10% reported it was unsatisfactory. There were significant relationships between the awareness and age (P=0.03) and education level (P=0.003), but no relationship was found with the gender of the participant (P>0.5).
Conclusion: In the current study, most of the participants reported that they knew the difference between the outpatient clinics and ERs. There were significant relationships between the awareness and age and education level, but an insignificant relation was found with the gender of the participant.

Key words: emergency department (ED), emergency rooms (ERs), awareness, knowledge, outpatient clinic, satisfaction