Lab Request Forms

1
THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPERLY FILLED REQUEST FORMS
FOR URINE STOOL R/E TESTS (2010)Does It
Matter Whether Or Not Request Form Are Correctly
Filled?

• Lic. Sagoe Augustine E.

2
Introduction

• Diagnosis of parasitic infections are essential
  for patient/hospital client disease management.
• Legibility and completeness of laboratory request
  forms are therefore important. Incomplete
  laboratory request forms may interfere with
  record keeping e.g. can lead to ambiguous
  diagnosis.

3
Objectives

• For the reasons mentioned in the introduction,
  the following questions need to be addressed
• Are medical laboratorians well guided by the
  information given by prescribers?
• Are we doing well in helping the patient/disease
  management?
• At what level can prescribers help?

4
Methods Procedures

• This was an operational research. Where 10,000
  request forms were included by random selection.
• 5,000 urine request forms
• 5,000 stool request forms
• Criteria for form exclusion
• Forms without Laboratory Receipt numbers. These
  request forms were selected from the bulk of the
  request from January October 2004.

5
Methods and Procedures continuous ..

• Clinical information

• Look-ups

• Personal information
• Really legible/illegible handwriting of
  prescribers
• Names
• Age ( included/excluded)
• Sex (included/excluded)

• Prognosis/Diagnosis
• Dept/ward indicated/Not
• Clinician (Prescribers name) indicated/Not
• Confirmatory information
• Prescribers signature

6
Results
Urine Request Forms
Request Forms Count Percentage
Selected 8311  
Included 5000 100
Without age indicated 2814 56.28
With illegible names 33 0.66
Without sex indication 2101 42.02
Without dept/ward indication 1008 20.16
Without prescribers name 3040 60.80
Without signature 1897 37.94
With diagnosis 1528 30.56
Without diagnosis 3472 69.44
7
Results cont
Stool Request Forms
Request Forms Count Percentage
Selected 5689  
Enrolled 5000 100
Without Age indicated 3527 70.54
With illegible names 94 1.88
Without sex indication 1873 37.46
Without Dept/Ward indication 2772 55.44
Without Prescribers names 3230 64.60
Without Signature 2713 54.26
With diagnosis 1029 20.58
Without diagnosis 3971 79.42
8
Stool Request Form With Diagnosis indicated
9
Conclusion

• Forms with the ages indicated helped in most
  cases to confirm diagnosis. E.g. Schistosomiasis
• The sex indication played its role in our yeast
  like cells infections
• In forms with diagnosis indicated 38.29 (urine
  tallied with parasite/cells detected).
• Some unknown abbreviations such as YYD, PPS, QRN
  etc. Were used for diagnosis which could not help
  much.

10
Recommendations

• Prescribers should take their time and completely
  fill laboratory request forms correctly and
  legibly. Anybody else filling, refilling or
  transcribing request form for a prescriber,
  should not omit diagnosis or use any unknown
  abbreviations. Replication of this work in all
  other departments in Central Laboratory would
  help improve services towards patients/disease
  management.