481 An Audit on the Completion of Hand Trauma Proformas – a Tertiary Centre Experience

Aim

The Royal College of Surgeons of England in its guidance "Safe Handover" set out minimum data necessary for safe handover. The Hand Pro-forma should be thought as part of hand over as it allows for clear communication of information between members of the team. In addition, the Hand Pro-forma is a medicolegal document.

Our previous audit on the quality of proforma completion highlighted that x-ray documentation was improving as it increased to 71% from 56% of the cases.

Method

We assessed the completion of the x-ray section within our current hand proforma. We reviewed the Hand trauma proforma documentation trauma clinic and ward admissions between 20/8/22 – 20/9/22 and used the British Society for Surgery of the Hand guidelines as a standard to compare.

Results

We reviewed twenty completed proformas. This indicated that an X-ray was obtained in 80% of the cases, which is a drop considering the previous audit highlighted a reporting rate of 95.5%. Only 40% of proformas documented which hospital the X-ray was performed and only 60% documented x-ray findings. This is a significant decrease from a previous 100% completion rate.

Conclusions

From this audit we identified that lack of access to external PACS system as a significant barrier to completion of documentation. As part of this audit cycle, we addressed this by providing access to the generic doctors account, to act as a temporary measure while newly rotating doctors sort their accounts. We are aiming to re-audit in 6-months’ time to assess intervention effects.