Is this admission really relevant?

Introduction Acutely admitted medical patients often present with a complex medical history. Patients admitted through an acute medical admission unit (AMAU) has had symptoms for an unknown period of time before contacting a general practitioner or the emergency room. The history will vary from acute onset to more chronic illness with acute worsening or lack of response to a given treatment. In AMAUs with limited beds and a large number of acute admissions daily we often witness disagreement between general practitioners, doctors and nurses whether or not the patient at hand has to be acutely admitted or even admitted at all. We therefore conducted a questionnaire study including doctors and nurses at an AMAU to investigate how often the two groups disagree on the necessity of an acute admission.