Caregiver reasons for tertiary health-care seeking for children aged ≤12 years

Background In Turkey, a mandatory referral system is not used. Caregivers, for their children, present directly to health-care providers at all levels. This allows patients to present directly to university hospitals. In this study, reasons for university hospital-treatment seeking by caregivers for child health problems is discussed. Methods This was a cross-sectional descriptive study at Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine, Izmir, Turkey, of 235 caregivers whose children were admitted to the outpatient clinic of the General Pediatrics Department between 4 and 11 April 2013. They completed a questionnaire on demographic data and reasons for presentation to the university hospital. Mann–Whitney U-test was used to compare group means, and Pearson chi-squared test for ratios between groups. P