[IDAK--inter-professional documentation of lung cancer patients' information regarding their status in the hospital]

The abbreviation IDAK stands for the documentation paper developed and tested during the project: Inter-professional Documentation of information (German: Aufklärung) in the hospital (German: Krankenhaus).

The aim of the IDAK project was to evaluate one documentation system for both medical and nursing staff about what the patients know regarding their diagnosis and prognosis. Accurate documentation of the patients' status of being well-informed should help to realize congruent communication by the nurses.

The case control study was undertaken with patients suffering from lung cancer; it aimed to show that nurses knowing about what the patients know, will be more confident in talks and stay longer at the bedside. After the descriptive examination the data were subjected to an explorative analysis.

We collected data for 76 daily profiles in the intervention group and 69 in the control group (N=145). In the intervention group we could detect a significantly higher contact time per conversation (intervention group 2:46 min; SD 1:05; SE 0:07, control group 2:19 min; SD 0:40; SE 0:04; Mann-Whitney: p(0.05)=0.016). The result of this study shows how often and for how long it is possible for patients with lung cancer to exchange information with nursing staff, but the result is too poor for showing an effect of the IDAK documentation.