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138 Can a simple referral form improve the quality of inpatient neurology referrals?

jnnp · 2025-11-26 · canonical JSON source

1 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Background In October 2024, our neurology department introduced a new inpatient referral form for doctors to fill in when referring to the specialty, replacing the older free-text referral note format. We sought to evaluate whether this change improved the quality of referral notes, and/or the percentage of patients being re-referred to the specialty.Methods Referral notes from two 4-week periods (pre- and post-intervention) were retrospectively analysed for the presence of the following elements in each referral note: consultant name, referral question, preferred mode of advice, history, past medical history, investigations, and neurological examination. We also looked at whether patients were re-referred to neurology within 14 days during the admission.Results 116 pre-intervention and 98 post-intervention referrals were included. 95% of post-intervention referrals contained a referral question (vs 84% pre-intervention), 89% documented a past medial history (vs 77%), 89% included relevant investigations (vs 78%), and 54% documented localised neurological examination findings (vs 32%). 28% of patients were re-referred to the specialty (31% pre-intervention)Conclusion Introducing a neurology referral form has significantly improved the quality of referral notes, most notably doubling the percentage of referrals with documented neurological examination. However, this did not result in a significant reduction in re-referrals to neurology.hussein.alfazly@gmail.com