Abstract
Abdominal pain (AP) is one of the most common complaints of patients, accounting for about 5% of all cases seen in the Emergency Department. Yet, abdominal pain is frequently evaluated in an irregular and non-standard manner, even within individual institutions. Thus, we developed a form that prompted for AP-specific information and hypothesized that use of such a form would increase the quantity and quality of data collected. All 11 emergency medicine residents at our institution were enrolled as subjects during a single calendar month (January, 2001) and were asked to use the new AP form during the weeks 2 and 3 (weeks 1 and 4 were the control period). Results showed that the use of the AP form significantly increased the recording of information related to: history of present illness, past medical and social history, review of systems, and physical exam. Such a complete data set is useful for follow-on consultations with different physicians, and also allows for long-term retrospective analyses of the data. However, difficulties with the form included the recording of multiple chief complaints and difficulty of having physicians remember to use the new form.
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