Surveying the status of the maintenance of medical records of casualties of Iraq-Iran war in hospitals affiliated to Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: During the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, a large number of war casualties were treated in academic hospitals in Ahvaz. The aim of this study was to survey the status of the
maintenance of medical records of casualties of Iraq-Iran in academic hospitals in Ahvaz.
Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in five hospitals affiliated to Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences in 2015. As the instrument for data gathering a checklist consisting of seven sections and 13 items related to the state of the maintenance of medical records was used. Data were collected through visiting the  hospitals and on-site review of medical records of war casualties. Next, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics in Excel 2007 software.
Results: There in the hospitals, medical records of war casualties were in the form of (patient) master index cards, admission booklets, outpatient and inpatient medical chart,
Phonetics card, and registry referral books. In all hospitals medical records of war casualties were kept in a traditionally paper-based filing approach; only in one hospital
documents imaging technique was used for keeping the medical records. Medical records were retrieved manually in three hospitals.
Conclusion: The results indicated that there were problems in maintaining, retrieval and physical security of the medical records of war casualties. Considering the significance of these documents, it is recommended that a comprehensive guideline for protecting these documents be issued by the relevant authoritative governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Health and the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.