Naila Nadeem, Abdul Rehman, Muhammad Awais.
Reliability of Chart Audit for Assessment of Radiology Reports: a Cross-Sectional Study.
Pak J Radiol Jan ;25(3):93-100.

Introduction: Written radiology reports are the prime output of radiology departments of any hospital. However, procedures to assess and improve quality of these reports are virtually non-existent. In the present study, we evaluated the reliability of chart audit as a tool for assessing radiology reports at a tertiary-care hospital. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out at the Department of Radiology of Aga Khan University Hospital (Karachi, Pakistan). Forty five (45) radiology reports pertaining to different specialties and reported between October and December, 2014 were selected. These reports were prepared by three different residents in second, third and fourth years of their residency. The final report was signed by different consultant radiologists at our hospital. Each report was assessed by four assessors using the ?Bristol Radiology Report Assessment Tool (BRRAT).? Assessors were two faculty members with more than five years of experience and two year V residents. Results: Mean overall assessment score of radiology reports was 6.54/10 ± 0.14 (standard error of mean). Cronbach?s alpha (?) co-efficient was calculated to be 0.760, suggestive of good internal consistency. Pearson?s correlation coefficients for intra-faculty, intra-resident and inter-observer correlations were 0.796, 0.715 and 0.736 respectively. Conclusion:These results indicate that chart audit using BRRAT is a reliable method for assessing written radiology reports. This tool may be used for work-place based assessment of radiology reports, which can potentially lead to improvements in overall quality of radiology reports.

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