Results

This audit included a total of 97 appointments during a 5-week period.

Indications for Consultation

Figure 1 shows the indications for each individual consultation,including re-attendances by the same patient. Otitis externa was by far the most frequent indication for an appointment, followed by epistaxis and foreign bodies in the ear. Surprisingly, patients whose appointments had been cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic made up only 1%.

Repeat Consultations

Repeat attendances made up 26/97 episodes of patient care. The most frequent diagnoses when adjusted to not include re-attenders are; foreign bodies (18%), epistaxis (17%) and OE (15%).. Of these re-attendances 13 were planned repeat consultations arranged by ENT, 11 were either via ED or repeat GP referral and in 2 cases the patient called the department. The greatest number of repeat appointments was 5 in an otitis externa patient, this patient had unfortunately been mismanaged by the GP and was resistant to further advice. Aside from this all remaining patients had either 2 or 3 appointments and 9 of the 16 patients had at least one phone appointment. Overwhelmingly the most common diagnosis in patients with repeat appointments was otitis externa followed by epistaxis nasal trauma and bleeding ears (Figure 2)

Age Distribution

The most frequently attending age group (Figure 3) was 0-9, primarily due to foreign bodies. Accounting for repeat appointments did not have a significant effect on age distribution.

Telephone Consultations

As described in Table 1, 26/97 appointments were carried out over the telephone. A total of 13 patients were solely managed with telephone consultations.