ASSESSMENT OF THE ADEQUACY FILLING OF RADIOLOGY REQUEST FORMS (RRFs) BY REFERRING CLINICIANS IN ALEX EKWUEME FEDERAL UNIVERSITY TEACHING HOSPITAL, ABAKALIKI, EBONYI STATE, NIGERIA

Mabel Chikodili Ugwuja, Eberechukwu Nwakaego Mokwua, Eric Ajogwu Nnadi and
Emmanuel Ifeanyi Obeagu*

ABSTRACT

Radiological investigations are often essential in the management of patients. The request forms act as a medium between the managing Physician and the Radiologists who is often required to make significant input. Failure to properly complete these forms may therefore result in misdiagnosis and possible mix-up of the forms. We therefore, undertook to document the extent to which radiological request forms are properly filled. Four hundred and eighty radiological request forms which had already been filled out by doctors at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital between December 2023 and February 2024 were randomly selected for the study. The forms came from different departments of the hospital and for different radiographic modalities including conventional X-ray, Computed Tomography, Fluoroscopy, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and others. The forms were assessed for contents, legibility, completeness of the fields, and adequacy of the information supplied. The data collated were entered using SPSS version 13 statistical software. The results were expressed in frequencies and percentages and then presented in tables and figure. Out of 480 request forms selected for the study, only 450 were legible while 30 were illegible. Many critical fields are missing in the RRFs. Such field include Clinical condition of the patient, the provisional diagnosis, Name of the referring Doctor and the phone numbers of the referring Doctor, the Consultant in charge and the patient. Only the Surname of the patients was fully entered on all the 450 legible forms that were analyzed. All other field were filled to varying percentages or not filled at all as follows: Ward/Clinic-400(88.8%), Hospital Number-395(88%), Date of request-433(96.2%), Age of patient-445 (98.9%), Sex-43 (96%), X-ray number-0(0%), Surname of patient-450(100%), Other name-442(98.2%), Occupation 360 (80%), Address395(87.8%), Ambulatory status (Walking case/Chair/ Trolley theatre Portable), 9(2%). Cassette Size 0(0%), Part of the body-429(95.3%), Examination required-444(98.6%), History of past operation-0(0%), History of Previous X-ray-0(0%), Previous X-ray Number-0(0%), LMP-362(79.5%), Exposure factors (View/KVP/MAS)-0(0%), Doctors Signature-369(82%),Name of consultant-387(86%), Radiologists Report-0(0%). Radiological request forms are not always filled out properly. Only the Surname of the patient was consistently filled while were vacant in all the forms.

Keywords: radiology, request forms, clinician.