Searching for more comprehensive health care records: development, application and assessment of a new tool to register outpatient consultations

Abstract

The medical record is important for health care since it allows, through the analysis of data collected in several contacts between patients and health units, to appreciate and understand the disease and health care processes. This comprehension will be the more complete, the more the medical record accounts for the patient’s way of living, health-disease processes, investigations and therapeutic procedures, clinical evolution and possible difficulties to follow medical advice – that is, the way health care was/is delivered by different professionals in several sectors. In this sense, the service – and its record as well – must focus on the individual, the person as a whole, living and becoming ill, and not only on his diseases and morbidities. Based on this premise, this study aimed to develop, apply and assess a new tool for outpatient records at the Integral Ambulatory Care (AMI) at Pedro Ernesto University.