Kathleen Barden
The Quality Patient Safety (QPS) team completed a review of Occurrences, Variances & Accidents (OVA’s), Risk Register, Clinical Documentation and Patient Complaints. The QPS team agreed to conduct an audit to establish the reason why patients discharge against medical advice (DAMA). The objectives was to establish if the patient and clinician completed the HMC DAMA form when the patient left the hospital, and determine the reasons for this action
The scope of this audit will be inpatients who discharged themselves against medical advice from Psychiatry Hospital over a six month period. A total of 60 patients were recorded as DAMA. The total number of files audited was 55 inpatients – 5 patients were Outpatients
Methodology: Information was retrieved from the Electronics Incident Reporting System (EIRS), Risk Register and Clinical Documentation Audits using the audit tool. A Data Collection Tool was also designed to enable the audit team to document all information collected from the audit tool.
Evidence collected from this audit identified that the psychiatry environment as the main reason (16.29%) why the patient requested to DAMA. A total of 8.15% of DAMA forms had no reason documented. Patients’ comments which were documented on the DAMA forms included lack of private rooms, inadequate facilities and feeling uncomfortable in the hospital environment. A further 4.7% requested transfer to a private hospital. A total of 34.5% patients were Qatari and 65.5% were non-Qatari. Recommendations and conclusions will be discussed in this presentation.
