TY - JOUR T1 - Acute primary health care needs of Syrian refugees immediately after arrival to Canada JF - Canadian Family Physician JO - Can Fam Physician SP - e30 LP - e38 VL - 66 IS - 1 AU - Wais Darwish AU - Laura Muldoon Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://www.cfp.ca/content/66/1/e30.abstract N2 - Objective To describe the population of Syrian refugees who received care at temporary triage clinics, the health issues addressed, and the health services used in the clinics.Design Cross-sectional retrospective study using electronic extraction of medical data of refugees attending the primary care triage clinics.Setting Temporary triage clinics in Ottawa, Ont.Participants Newly arrived Syrian refugees temporarily housed in hotels in Ottawa in 2016.Main outcome measures Demographic characteristics (age and sex), number of clinic visits per patient, diagnostic assessments (categorized using the ENCODE-FM [Electronic Nomenclature and Classification of Disorders and Encounters for Family Medicine] at each patient visit [≥ 1 diagnostic assessment could be entered per visit]), laboratory tests requested per visit, and medications prescribed per visit.Results Of the 912 newly arrived Syrian refugees, 338 (37.1%) visited the clinics, resulting in 822 diagnostic assessments (154 different types of ENCODE-FM diagnostic assessments). Refugees’ age ranged from 1 month to 62 years, with a median age of 13.5 years. Among the refugees, 50.9% were female and 1 patient’s sex was not documented in the electronic medical record. The number of visits to the clinic per patient varied from 1 to 7. Most frequent diagnoses were as follows: acute upper respiratory infection (24.0%), social-cultural problems (11.2%), and pharyngitis (8.6%). Most frequent diagnoses for multiple clinic visits included hypertension, acute upper respiratory infection, and child developmental problems. Adults were prescribed significantly more medications (P = .036) and received significantly more laboratory test requisitions (P = .006) compared with children.Conclusion Primary care triage clinics on-site where newly arrived Syrian refugees were housed provided basic care for simple ambulatory conditions and might have prevented overloading of other components of the health care system. ER -