The effectiveness of training on daily progress note writing by medical interns

INTRODUCTION: There is no formal education or training course about daily progress note writing in Iranian medical interns' curriculum. The current study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a training intervention on daily progress note writing by Iranian medical interns. METHODS: This quasi-experimental study (pre- and post-test) was conducted on 150 medical interns selected through the census method at Razi Hospital of Rasht, north of Iran from October-2018 to May-2019. In the baseline, daily progress notes written by 150 medical interns were assessed using a Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan (SOAP)-based questionnaire by the expert panel. Content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experts and internal consistency was determined using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. In the intervention phase, training sessions (4 one-hour sessions) on how to write the daily progress note, based on SOAP format and its importance, were held for the interns. All medical interns were given a week to meet the SOAP standards. Then, the same expert panel reviewed and assessed the newly written daily progress notes of the same medical interns. Finally, the scores from the evaluation of progress note writing, before and after the intervention, were compared with paired sample t-test. RESULTS: The mean age of the medical interns was 23.1±5.2 years. The majority of them were male (56%). There was a significant improvement in all SOAP notes’ components written by medical interns between the pre- and post-intervention periods (general rules: 52.7±24.5 vs. 85.4±18.2, P<0.001; subjective: 21.2±18.3 vs. 61.7±24.3, P<0.001; objective: 25.3±18.3 vs. 71.3±25.2, P<0.001; assessment: 10.7±13.0 vs. 51.4±29.6, P<0.001; plan: 11.2±15.2 vs. 49.6±27.5, P<0.001; total: 21.9±13.0 vs. 61.8±23.0, P<0.001). But the scores were still far from the desirable level after the training intervention. CONCLUSION: The finding of the present research suggests that a training intervention can lead to some improvements in the daily progress notes written by Iranian medical interns.