Assessment of Patients’ Medical Laboratory Request Forms for Compliance in Jos University Teaching Hospital, Jos-Nigeria

Abstract

AbstractBackground: Medical laboratory request forms are important medium of communication between the physicians and the medical laboratorypractitioners. The request form provides demographic information of the patients as well as clinical conditions, clinician, specimen informationand the targeted laboratory. Inability of the physician to indicate any of the information mentioned above could pose a negative effect in accurate deinitive diagnosis of the patients’ disease which could affect proper treatment or management. Aim of study: The study seeks to assess the level of completeness of patients request forms in Jos University Teaching Hospital. Study volunteers and methods: A retrospective study was carried out on 4,310 in and out Patients request forms as illed by the physician and sent to four laboratory departments of the hospital between the period of January and July 2017 having gotten Ethical clearance from the ethicalcommittee of the teaching hospital. Results: The result of the indings revealed that from the 4310 request forms assessed, patient’ demographic information, recorded 20.9%,17.2%, 14.9%, 1.3%, 0.9% and 0.0% incomplete rate for age, ward, department, hospital number, sex and name of the patient respectively. Patients’clinical information revealed 54.7% and 8.0% incomplete rate for patients’ clinical data and provisional diagnosis respectively. For Clinicianinformation, incomplete rate of 54.7%, 17.8% and 8.2% was recorded for signature of the doctor, name of doctor and the consultant respectively. Onspecimen information, an incomplete rate of 98.2%, 9.0%, 7.6% and 2.9% was observed for time of specimen collection, date, nature of specimenand investigation required respectively. On targeted laboratory, the study recorded an incomplete rate of 8.6%. The result also show that from all the4310 request form assessed, none is 100% completely illed. Conclusion: This study reveals incomplete illing of medical laboratory request forms in JUTH. There is the need to adhere to InternationalStandard Organization guidelines in illing the laboratory request forms for a better patient care and improvement of quality since most decision are taken by the physician or the nurse depends on medical laboratory results