Puzzle Out the Reason behind Prolonged Hospital Stay among Children

Aim: To find out the reasons behind prolonged hospital stay among children.

Study Design: Descriptive cross-sectional

Place and Duration of Study: Study was conducted at the People university of medical and health sciences hospital during the period of November 2020 to April 2021.

Methodology: All the children between the age group of 1 year to 12 years, who were admitted in pediatric ward of the hospital for any reason, were included in the study. Prolonged hospital stay was labelled when it exceeded above 7 days. A self-designed proforma was made which consisted of demographic data, total duration of stay and the most probable cause of stay. Data was analyzed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. p-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant

Results: The mean age of the study participants with standard deviation was 6.8 ± 2.3 years. Half of the participants (50.9%) admitted in hospital for prolonged duration were from the age group of ≤ 5 years. About 55.7% of the participants were female and majority were from the lower socioeconomic class (53.8%) Mean and standard deviation of duration of hospital stay was 11.85 ± 2.29. In majority of cases (n=80) there was delay in consulting a physician which was followed by resistant to the therapy and acquiring nosocomial infection while very few of the cases were having some invasive procedure done so increased duration of stay.

Conclusion: It can be concluded that the younger age group that is less than 5 years is the most significant risk factor while the most common reason is the delayed consultation to the physician.