Abstract:
Background - Relevant clinical information that prompted radiologic examination of the patients should be provided by referring physicians for accurate interpretation of images by radiologists. Many studies from secondary data show poor practice of referring physician on writing clinical data on radiology requests. So assessing the practice of referring physicians on writing clinical data, and associated factors affecting the practice is paramount to identify the problems and search solutions.
Objective - To assess the practice of writing clinical data on Radiology request forms and associated factors among referring physicians working at Tibebe Ghion specialized hospital, Bahir Dar City, Ethiopia, 2021.
Methods - Institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted by using systematic random sampling technique on 203 physicians working at Tibebe Ghion Specialized hospital, from November 15 to December 15, 2021. Data was collected by self-administered questionnaire and entered using EpiData software and exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Descriptive statistics with cross tab, frequency table, graphs and bar charts were used. The association between dependent and independent variables was assessed using multivariable logistic regression analysis with 95% CI and P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results - A total of 203 physicians were involved in the study, the majority (90.1%) were interns and residents with male predominance 167 (82.3%). About 25 (12.3%) of participants didn’t write clinical data of the patient on radiology requests and more than half of them 14 (56%) believe that clinical data is not necessary for interpretation of radiologic images. Half of the respondents 102 (50.2%) ask assistance from colleagues in busy time, majority of them 38 (37.3%) ask junior physicians and 28 (27.5%) ask assistant nurses. About 15 (7.4%) of respondents believe that writing clinical data of patient on request is not important, and majority of them 11 (73.3 %) reasoned out that writing clinical data on request forms biases radiologist to false positive diagnosis. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted but there was no statistically significant factor found with dependent variable.
Conclusion - This study found that the practice of physicians to write relevant clinical data of the patient on radiology requests is 87.7% which is somewhat low because expected is 100%. Some physicians have false beliefs that writing clinical data and working diagnosis of the patient on RRFs is not necessary for interpretation of radiologic image and some others believe that clinical data written biases radiologist to false positive.
Key words: Practice, referring physician, radiology request, clinical data