Quality of discharge summaries prepared by first year internal medicine residents

BMC Medical Education

Table 2 Frequency of inaccurate information in discharge summaries, when information was present

	Inaccurate n/N*	% (95% CI)	Inter-rater reliability (kappa)
Discharge diagnosis	4/89	4.5 (1.4-11.4)	0.79
Discharge medication list	30/84	35.7 (26.3-46.4)	0.94
Medication change(s)	23/78	29.5 (20.5-40.4)	0.75
Reason for medication change(s)	26/69	37.7 (27.2-49.5)	0.79
Clinical course in hospital	12/90	13.3 (7.6-22.0)	0.63
Result of relevant investigations	7/87	8.0 (3.7-15.9)	0.46
Follow-up instructions for family physicians	15/84	17.9 (11.0-27.5)	0.83

Abbreviations: 95 % CI, 95 % confidence interval.
*Note that some discharge summaries are excluded in the denominator, either because the given item was not relevant to the patient’s stay in hospital, or because information for a given item (e.g., discharge medication list) was simply missing, since accuracy could only be assessed if information was present (and relevant to the hospital stay).

ISSN: 1472-6920