Reasons of no Show in Outpatient Pediatric Physical Therapy Rehabilitation in King Abdullah Specialist Children Hospital, Riyadh

Patients who fail to show up for their scheduled medical appointment create a big issue in the hospital care system which affects clinical productivity and quality of care. There is not enough research that has examined the no-show rate of pediatric patients at outpatient physical therapy clinics. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the most common reasons of no-shows and its rate amongst pediatric patients at the physiotherapy department. This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the physiotherapy department of King Abdullah Specialist Children Hospital between July 2018 and October 2018. Patients' parents who failed to show-up for their appointments at the physiotherapy department were contacted through the telephone, data was collected using a telephonic questioner. Also, we used patient medical files to obtain the demographic information and diagnosis. All the gathered data was analyzed statistically using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). On average of 225 patients during study period had no show resulting in 17%. A total of 75 patients were failed to attend their appointment at physiotherapy clinical during the study period. The mean age of the patient was 4.5 year and the majority of them were male (53.3%). The most common reason for no show was forgetting the appointment (20%), longdistance travel (17.3%) and unavailable transportation (12%). Among those who had not attended the scheduled appointment, 16% of them did not attend the schedule appointments more than once. No show rate was found a little high in Pediatric physical therapy outpatient clinic which is 17%. This study has shown that the most common reason for the no-show at physiotherapy appointments was forgetting the appointment (20%) and Long Distance Travel (17%). Most of the other studies which were done on this topic and conducted through telephone interviews supported our findings. A pilot study in a pediatric neurologist clinic identified that forgetting an appointment was the second most common reason for missed appointments. Also, a retrospective study reported that the two most common reasons for missing an appointment were forgetting (n = 97, 35.5%) and miscommunication (n = 86, 31.5%). Another study mentioned that forgetting the appointment as the third common reason (18%). This study identifies that, in order to overcome this problem, it is highly recommended to develop a flexible, easily accessible appointment system with reminder, and child's parents should be educated to adhere to scheduled appointment.