AB104. SOH22ABS156. Is there a role for an operative note proforma for common on call surgical procedures?—A clinical audit assessing the quality of operative notes in incision and drainage of pilonidal abscesses

Background: Pilonidal disease is a common condition with an incidence of approximately 26 per 100,000. It commonly affects young adults. Occurring 2–4 times in males than females. The most common acute presentation is a pilonidal abscess with the treatment of choice being incision and drainage of the abscess. Pilonidal abscess I&D is a commonly performed surgery, generally performed by the on-call team. Operative note quality is important not just acutely for care and safety of the patient but also for future audit and medico-legal reasons.

Methods: We performed a retrospective chart review, assessing the operative notes of 107 patients who underwent incision and drainage of a pilonidal abscess in University Hospital Limerick between 2015 and 2020. The operative notes were then compared with the standards, extracted from the RCSI Code of Practice for Surgeons 2018. The standard identifies 14 items that all operative notes should include. The data was anonymised and analysed using Microsoft Excel. Compliance is calculated by the percentage of the 14 items included, all are equally weighted.

Results: Analysis of the 107 cases revealed an overall compliance of 68.5% with the standards. Of note the inclusion of the item on the standard operative note template improved compliance to 97.5%, whereas compliance where the item was not included in the template was 66.4%.

Conclusions: The overall compliance of 68.5% is reasonable however there is room for improvement. We believe the most effective way to improve compliance would be to introduce a new operative note template/proforma for pilonidal abscess I&D and other common surgical procedures. We have developed a sample proforma for pilonidal sinus I&D.

Keywords: Pilonidal abscess; pilonidal disease; operative note; I&D; proforma