Audit of completion of radiology request form in a nigerian specialist hospital

Clinical audit is one approach to improve the quality of patient care, completion of request form inclusive. Radiology request forms are essential communication tools between the clinician and the radiologist. The aim of this study is to audit the adequacy of completion of X-ray request forms.

A review of all consecutive request form received at the X-ray unit of the over a period of six weeks to assess the completeness of filling of the forms, details of biodata/clinical information, previous exposure and information about the requesting officer. The data was entered into a SPSS statistical software and analysed descriptively and results presented in tables/figures.

Two hundred and two request forms were analysed. All the request had names on it however 89.1% had complete and adequate information while 10.9% have incomplete and inadequate information on names, one hundred and ninety-six (97%) had dates while, 6(3%) did not have information regarding date of request, space for the addresses were filled in 80 (39.6%) out of which only 24 (11.9%) had adequate and complete information. Clinical information were adequate and complete in 34.4%, only 6(8.3%) of those with previous x-rays submitted their previous film with the new request.

We concluded that radiological investigation forms are still incompletely and inadequately filled. This will have effect on the quality and the overall service provided by both the radiographer and the radiologist and may have effect sometimes on the clinical decision and outcome.