Abstract
Background
Outpatient waiting list figures have substantially increased over the last 3 years due to the effects of a global pandemic and cyber-hacking crisis. Multidisciplinary initiatives are essential to try to reduce the burden on overwhelmed medical and surgical specialties.
Objective
The purpose of the study is as follows: (1) to demonstrate the potential for a problem-specific clinic to help ease the burden on an overwhelmed specialty and identify high-risk patients who may benefit from earlier surgical intervention and (2) to provide supervised clinical training to our clinical nurse specialist.
Methods
A retrospective audit of outpatient referrals awaiting an appointment was conducted, and a new outpatient clinic was formed for patients referred with tonsil issues with or without additional complaints.
Results
Two hundred ninety-five patients with an average waiting time of 14.4 months were offered an outpatient appointment over 5 months. Sixty-four percent (n = 189) attended their appointments, and 59.3% (n = 112) of these were listed for surgery. One hundred fifty-eight patients were able to be discharged back to the care of their general practitioners.
Discussion/conclusion
This outpatient clinic identified a large number of patients waiting significant periods of time for an outpatient appointment and allowed a definitive clinical decision to be made with most patients being either discharged or listed for surgery. Initiatives such as this offer the possibility of reducing the burden of long waiting times on individual institutions.
Availability of data and material
All relevant data is stored in a secure Excel sheet on a secure hard drive and can be made available on request.
Code availability
Not applicable.
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K.M. performed the literature review, data collection, data analysis, writing of the manuscript, and review of the manuscript. L.T. performed data collection and reviewed the manuscript prior to submission. E.K. was the senior author and provided continuous support and input into the data collection and analysis and reviewed the manuscript prior to submission.
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Munir, K., Tighe, L. & Keane, E. A single-center audit of a novel tonsil long-waiter outpatient clinic. Ir J Med Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-023-03564-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11845-023-03564-7