THE VISIT TO DOMICILE: USE AND ABUSE

Key words: Home visit, Paediatric practice, Fever

Aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of the home visit in the daily work of the family paediatrician. Twentitwo paediatrician, operating whithin the Napoli 4 Health Autority, partecipated in the study. In the first three weeks of november 1995 the request of at home visit have been 1331 and in 973 cases the pediatrician actually went to visit the child at home. Most calls were made on Monday (381) that is also the day of the greatest number of visits actually made (291). Fever over the 38°C was the most frequent reason for calling the paediatrician. The attitude of the paediatricians compared to the requests has been rather different. The use of strict criteria allowed to establish which requests could be “a priori” defined as justifiable or not. The not justifiable requests were 666 (50%); 352 of them had been actually followed by home visit. In the majority of the cases the children’s clinical conditions were either excellent or good.