Korean Journal of Health & Nursing (Korean J Health Nurs, KJHN)
Open Access, Peer Reviewed
pISSN 3058-4744
eISSN 3058-5643
Original Article

Predictors of Emergency Room Visits in Patients with Hematological Malignancies: A Prospective Study

1Nurse, Kyungpook National University Hospital, Republic of Korea
2Professor Emeritus, College of Nursing, Keimyung University, Republic of Korea

Corresponding to Jeong Sook Park, E-mail: jsp544@kmu.ac.kr

Korean J Health Nurs 2024;1(2):95-106. https://doi.org/10.12972/kjhn.2024.01.02.04
Received on November 18, 2024, Revised on December 13, 2024, Accepted on December 14, 2024, Published on 31 December 2024.
© Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify predictors of emergency room visit in patients with hematological malignancies. Methods: The subjects of the study were 212 patients with hematological malignancies in K University Hospital in Daegu. The measurement tools were Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT)-fatigue scale, family support, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), self-care knowledge, and self-care behavior tools. The physiological indicators were retrieved from the electronic medical records. The data were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. Results: Among 212 subjects, 23.1% visited emergency room, and 76.9% didn’t visit emergency room. In the emergency room visit group, significant variables were diagnosis (p=.009), treatment method (p=.025), days since first diagnosis (p=.022), platelet count (p=.022), fatigue (p<.001), self-care behavior (p=.042), and infection control self-care behavior (p=.010). Among the 6 predictive variables inserted in the logistic regression analysis, platelet (CI=1.70-13.06, OR=4.72), fatigue (CI=2.47-7.69, OR=4.31), infection control self-care behavior (CI=1.93-12.19, OR=3.37) and days since diagnosis (CI=0.66-2.31, OR=1.23) were identified as significant predictors. Conclusion: It is important to pay attention to and manage the predictors of emergency room visits for patients with hematological malignancies. And it is necessary to develop nursing interventions to prevent emergency room visits including predictive factors.

Keywords

Hematological Malignancies, Emergency Room Visit, Predictor, Prospective Study