Do you really get what you are looking for? Exploring the medical call writing trend in tertiary care hospitals

Abstract

Objective: To explore the trend of medical call writing by doctors working in tertiary care hospitals.
 Methods: A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out to evaluate the quality of medical calls written by the doctors at three tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between June 2016 to June 2017. An instrument was developed following AMEE Guide 87. Its content validity and reliability were established by 33 consultants from twenty specialties. A total of 198 medical calls (66 each) were collected from medicine, surgery and allied specialties and evaluated on the basis of validated instrument.
 Results: During instrument development, six items with content Validity Ratio of 0.78 & Kappa value of 0.70 were deemed most significant in every medical call written. Among all the calls, the great majority (96% and 84.34%) mentioned the reason for referral (item 1) and history of presenting problem (item 2), respectively, while item 6 (explicit mention of the doctor who will receive the call) was addressed the least (17.6%). Item 3 (Result of physical examination) and 4 (what tests have been done/arranged by the referring doctor and a summary of the main findings) were stated in < 30% of the calls whereas item 5 (diagnosis/provisional diagnosis) was specified in less than half of the calls.
 Conclusion: In this study, the written medical calls of different specialties were evaluated using specifically designed six items instrument. Unfortunately, the content of medical calls assessed was found to be inadequate probably because medical call writing is not explicitly taught at under and postgraduate levels.
 doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1642
 How to cite this:Khan AR, Mahboob U, Baseer N. Do you really get what you are looking for? Exploring the medical call writing trend in tertiary care hospitals. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(4):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1642
 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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“…A study conducted in Khyber Medical University to explore the trend of medical call writing by doctors working in tertiary care hospitals, concluded that the content of medical calls was found to be inadequate. 11 Similar observations were made in the present study. This was probably because medical colleges and training programmes focus on patient diagnosis, management and bedside manners, but do not include any emphasis on effective communication between physicians.…”

Contents and Quality of Referral Letters Received at the Emergency Paediatric Unit of a Tertiary Hospital in South East Nigeria

“…Several authors [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] including Osinaike et al [1] in Lagos reported that referral letters received were poorly written and with significant information about patient care frequently missing. The information commonly documented as missing in the referral letters included identity of the writers, the patients' age and gender, the treatment given, the findings from the investigations performed, the medical history and what the writers expect from the referral.…”

“…The information commonly documented as missing in the referral letters included identity of the writers, the patients' age and gender, the treatment given, the findings from the investigations performed, the medical history and what the writers expect from the referral. Other commonly missing information included examination findings, provisional diagnosis, history of presenting complaints, writers' addresses, reasons for the referral and patients' names [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”