Factors affecting the practices of clinical health workers in manual patient record registration process: The case of Addis Ababa public hospitals.

Abstract

Introduction:- The objective of the HMIS would be to record information on health events and check the quality of services at different levels of health care. One of the services is patient record registration process which could be affected by different factors. Objectives: - The general objective of this study was to assesses those factors like knowledge, attitudes, practices and demographic variables that might affect the practice of clinical health workers on manual patient record registration processes, in the case of Addis Ababa Public Hospitals. Methods:-An institution based cross sectional study was conducted using mixed (quantitative and qualitative) techniques. Two stage sampling methods were used to select the clinical health workers. Self administered questionnaires; interview and patient record review were used as data collection tools. A simple random sampling technique was used to access patient records. Percentile, frequencies, chi-square test and logistic regression were used for analysis. The study was conducted from February 2013 until December 2013. Results and Conclusion:- Regarding the practices 44.1% of the clinical health workers have poor practices on manual patient record registration process. Educational level, sex and knowledge level of the participants were found to be factors that affect manual patient record registration processes. From multivariate logistic regression the health officers show 10.3 time good practices than specialists. Diploma nurses have 3.6 times good practices than the specialists. And also the B.Sc. nurses have shown 3.32 times good practices than the specialists. Regarding gender and practices on patient record registration process, males have 1.83 times good practice than females. To improve the practices of clinical health workers with high education level providing performance based motivation/ incentives may help in boosting the practices of patient record registration processes. Increasing number of nurses and implementing three shift systems might reduce the work load of the nurses. Providing sufficient attention and sufficient budget allocation by Addis Ababa Health Bureau is mandatory to improve data quality in hospitals.