Documentation Patient Encounters During a Humanitarian Assistance Mission to Guatemala.

摘要

Researchers from the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC) collected patient encounter data from Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) physicians who traveled with a non-government organization, HELPS, International, on a humanitarian assistance mission to Guatemala. The purpose was for NHRC to expand its database of operations other than war patient information and to test a revised patient encounter form. The purpose of the NMCSD staff was to train to provide medical care under austere conditions. Data were collected for 857 patient encounters during which 1476 diagnoses were made. Women comprised 57% of the sample, and children aged 1-10 formed the largest age group (20.9%). The NMCSD staff included several eye specialists; therefore, the diagnoses were most frequently ophthalmologic conditions. Other frequent diagnoses included worms, musculoskeletal pain, headaches, and diarrhea. The revised, forced-choice patient encounter form alleviated problems of illegibility and nonstandard language often found in free-text forms. Future research will continue to improve data collection methods and to expand the NHRC medical information database.