| dc.description.abstract | Introduction: The radiology report is the primary written communication between the radiologist interpreting the study and the physician who requested the examination. A radiology report serves as a medico-legal document and it also guides patient management. Therefore, it needs to be as accurate as possible. Referring clinicians are the primary consumers of radiology reports, therefore it is necessary to get feedback from them on radiology reports. The purpose of this study was to find out the perspectives of referring clinicians towards radiology reports submitted from the radiology department at Mulago Hospital.
Methods: Permission was sought from the research and ethics committee of radiology department of Makerere University and Mulago National Referral Ethics Committee. The study is a descriptive cross-sectional study employing quantitative and qualitative techniques. Purposive sampling method was used to select clinicians who refer patients for radiology examinations. Clinicians perspectives on delivery time, terminologies, diagnosis & recommendations of the radiology reports was done using questionnaires and observations. STATA 16 and SPSS 16.0 software were used in analyzing the quantitative data. Qualitative data was analyzed narratively.
Results: Seventy questionnaires were distributed and a response rate of 70％(49) achieved with department of pediatrics 15(30％) having highest response rate and accidents and emergency having the least 4％(2). Using blooms cutoff perceptions were graded as negative, moderate and positive. The demographics did not affect the perception of the clinicians towards the radiology report as bi-variate analysis of sex, age and department (p=0.49)
showed no associations. There were more clinicians with negative perspective(27％, 13) as
compared those with a positive perceptive(24％, 12) about the delivery time of radiology reports. Majority of the clinicians had a positive perspective(76％, 37) towards the terminologies used in radiology reports with few(6％, 3) expressing a negative perspective towards the terminologies noting that they are sometimes unnecessarily complicated. Close to three quarters of the respondents(67％, 33) had a moderate perception while a meagre(11%, 5) had negative perception that the radiology reports answer clinical questions asked. Most of the referring clinicians (76％, 36) expressed a positive perspective while few(9％, 4) had a negative perception towards the recommendations written in the radiology report. None of the clinicians who participated had views that they do not totally understand the terminologies used or that the recommendations are not necessary to be included, neither that reports do not answer clinical questions asked.
Conclusion; Clinicians in Mulago hospital have a moderate-positive perceptive towards the radiology reports from the radiology department with respect to time, terminologies, diagnosis and recommendations. | en_US |
