Table 5.

Reasons for self-referral categorized in themes

Study		Country	N (total)	Percentages per theme
Ref. nr.	Author			Health concerns	Expecting investigations	Convenience of the ED	Lesser accessibility of primary care	No confidence in GP/primary care	Advice from others	Financial considerations
[13]	De Valk	The Netherlands	436	2	28	16	7	4	3
[33]	Hunt2	USA	990	7		13	11
[12]	Coleman	UK	255	11	48	13	5		43
[16]	O’Halloran	UK	124	11		30		21	6
[36]	Shah	Kuwait	1146	11		13	8
[33]	Hunt	USA	548	15		20	12
[18]	Stewart	UK	585	16		10	10
[24]	Wilkinson	UK	213	17		14	14	2	11
[22]	Rajpar	UK	54	22	4	6	50
[20]	Van der Linden	The Netherlands	1751	27		34
[25]	Ward	UK	339	27			22	4	12
[3]	Moll van Charante	The Netherlands	224	30	36	16	4
[15]	Laffoy	Ireland	395	35	18	14				1
[21]	Singh	UK	217	41	24	7	18		7
[35]	Lee	Hong Kong	726	44		12			-	3
[14]	McGuigan	UK	196	48		6	5		35
[27]	Norredam	Denmark	2746	63			13
[39]	Rassin	Israel	73	63		47			69
[38]	Masso	Australia	397	67	51	8	8			3
[31]	Northington	USA	279	74						42
[37]	Siminski	Australia	400	80	74	21	16			9
[32]	Ragin	USA	1536	95		87				25
[17]	Rieffe	The Netherlands	430	-						-
[29]	Grant	USA	112	-		-	-			-
[5]	Jaarsma van Leeuwen	The Netherlands	1068		28		11	3
[26]	Myers	UK	150		47	2	21		9
[23]	Shipman	UK	82		-	-	-
[28]	Mestitz	UK	770		-	-
[19]	Thomson	UK	147			24
[30]	Howard	USA	31			-	-		-
[34]	Koziol-McLain	USA	30			-			-

- = Reported, but no percentages given/qualitative study