Improving documentation of cardiovascular disease risk in patients with diabetes attending non communicable disease clinics at West Bay Health Center in Qatar

The documentation of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in medical records of patients with type 2 diabetes attending non communicable disease (NCD) clinics at West Bay Health Center in Qatar is less than ideal. Poor documentation of CVD will lead to poor preventive and management plans, with negative consequences for patients. Our aim is to improve this documentation of cardiovascular disease risk from 13% to 70% through the use of the WHO CVD risk prediction charts, which ran from September 2014 to January 2015. An intervention in the form of an education session was run on 13th November 2014 for nurses that run the NCD clinic, covering the new NCD format (including the location of risk documentation, the method used for calculation the CVD, and mandatory documentation of CVD scores). A group discussion was also held with a physician for revising the CVD risk that was documented by nurses. Posters were placed in the NCD nurse station and clinics to remind them about CVD calculation and documentation. The average percentage of complete CVD risk documentation for patients with diabetes was 7%, increasing to 59% after the intervention. Overall, our intervention improved the documentation of CVD by 52%.