[Mobile emergency care medical records audit: the need for Tunisian guidelines]

Sante Publique. 2017 Mar 6;29(1):71-79.
[Article in French]

Abstract

Objective: This study was designed to assess the quality of the Gabès (Tunisia) mobile emergency care medical records and propose corrective actions.Materials and methods: A clinical audit was performed at the Gabès mobile emergency care unit (SMUR). Records of day, night and weekend primary and secondary interventions during the first half of 2014 were analysed according to a data collection grid comprising 56 criteria based on the SMUR guidelines and the 2013 French Society of Emergency Medicine evaluation guide. A non-conformance score was calculated for each section.Results: 415 medical records were analysed. The highest non-conformance rates (48.5%) concerned the “specificities of the emergency medical record” section. The lowest non-conformance rates concerned the surveillance data section (23.4%). The non-conformance score for the medical data audit was 24%.Conclusion: This audit identified minor dysfunctions that could be due to the absence of local guidelines concerning medical records in general and more specifically SMUR. Corrective measures were set up in the context of a short-term and intermediate-term action plan.

Keywords: clinical audit; medical records; quality improvement.

MeSH terms

  • Ambulances*
  • Guidelines as Topic*
  • Humans
  • Medical Audit
  • Medical Records / standards*
  • Mobile Health Units*
  • Retrospective Studies
  • Tunisia