An audit of completeness of ct scan request forms a retrospective hospital based descriptive cross-sectional study at tikur anbessa specialized hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2017-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background:
Radiologic request forms are the most important, may be the only formal, means of
communication tool between the clinicians and the radiologists/radiographers. Many research
evidences showed that incompletely filled radiology forms resulted in deteriorating the quality of
patient care given by the specific health institution. It is a worldwide practice to do clinical audit
in order to improve patient care in a medical institution, hence; including auditing of
completeness of radiologic request forms is one approach to improve patient care.
The aim of this study was to audit the completeness of CT request forms sent from different units
and departments of our institution, TASH.
METHODS AND MATERIALS: I scrutinized the CT scan request forms received at
Radiology Department, radiology reporting unit, TASH, from 15th July to 15th August 2017.
Descriptive study design was applied to assess for the frequency of completeness of the request
formsindicated by referring physicians.
A nonprobability Quota sampling method was used to select 300 request forms over a period of
one month. The patient name, age, address, MRN, ward, clinical background
(diagnosis),anatomic location to be imaged and the name and signature of referring clinician
were considered as the minimum contents of the request form which were compiled in a
structured blind ended questionnaires and analyzed via SPSS version 20and frequency and
percentages were obtained.
RESULTS: The study generally demonstrated many of the data on the request form were
incompletely filled. The patient name, fathers’ name, age, gender,anatomic location to be imaged
andMRN were the highest filled data in all the requests with a frequency of 100%, 100%, 100%,
100%, 100% and 296/300 (98.7%) respectively. In contrary, the least filled data were relevant
laboratory data, patients’ address, physicians address and previous imaging history which
revealed 1/300 (0.3%), 13/300 (4.3%), 15/300 (3.0%) and 52/300 (17.3%) filling rate,
respectively. The referring unit was filled in 117 (39%) while the clinical diagnosis was
mentioned in 138 (46%) of the cases. Of 300 request analyzed 279 (93%) had referring
physicians name and 295 (98.3%) had their signature.CONCLUSION: The completeness of the CT scan request forms was substandard and it should
be improved.
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Keywords
Request forms, CT scan, Communication tools, Completeness, Assess.