Actividad desarrollada por los Servicios de Medicina Interna de los hospitales públicos de Galicia

Resumo

OBJECTIVE: Showing the actual activity performed by internists in various public hospitals in Galicia. The aim is to get a picture of the organization of Internal Medicine Service (SMI) of our region. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Galician Society of Internal Medicine (SOGAMI) conducted a survey on different aspects of the activity developed by SMI of each public hospital in Galicia in 2009. It was answered by the representatives-members of each hospital�s SOGAMI or, alternatively, by another member of respondent centre. To compare some variables, hospitals were classified into two levels: County Hospitals and Not County Hospitals, including the latter both the Area Hospitals and Reference Hospitals. A descriptive study of variables was performed, expressing the measures of central tendency and dispersion for quantitative variables and the absolute value and percentage of qualitative variables. RESULTS: Fourteen of the sixteen public hospitals in Galicia participated. 22% of the beds of Galician hospitals are the responsibility of Internal Medicine Services. The average number of beds by a doctor of Internal Medicine is 8.5 ± 2.0. There are 253 internist doctors working in the 14 hospitals in the study, 28 of them work in other areas of the hospital not dependent of Internal Medicine. The average stay in hospital in 2009, the SMI was 9.8 ± 1.3 days. The average guards of internal medicine by internist in Galicia are 3.5 ± 0.9 a month. 7.6% of internists work only in external consultations. Only in 42.9% of hospitals there are residents in those consultations. The average hospital inter-consultations are 13.3 ± 11.4 per hospital per week. CONCLUSIONS: Internal Medicine is responsible for the hospital care of a large part of the Galician population. There is heterogeneity in the Internal Medicine Services of our region that is not attributable only to the different levels of hospitals.