Knowledge, attitudes and current practices of intern medical officers in Colombo District regarding legal importance of medical records

Background: The importance of knowledge, attitude and practice of medical personnel in medico-legal aspect of healthcare has been raised with the development of health care system in Sri Lanka. Objective: To determine knowledge, attitude and current practices among interns in maintaining legally important medical records at selected hospitals of Colombo district. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among IMOs of two teaching hospitals (TH1 and TH2) and a Base hospital (BH) in Colombo district, Sri Lanka. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and current practice and  marks were given and categorized as either poor (less than 50%) or good (more than and equal to 50%). The Study was carried out among all the 81 IMOs of the selected hospitals.  Results:  The BH had the highest percentage (69%) of IMOs with good knowledge whereas TH1 had 42% and TH2 had 47%. However, there were no statistically significant differences seen among the three hospitals (p= 0.238). Majority (82%) of all the IMOs had good attitudes and best attitudes were seen among the IMOs of TH2 (94%). Out of all the IMOs, 64% had good practice. Mean values related to knowledge were compared and the graduates from the 4thUniversity had the highest percentage in terms of knowledge (85%), attitude (82%), current practice (15%) and overall performance (47%) as well. Conclusions: There is good knowledge regarding legally important medical documents among IMOs with a good overall performance regarding legally important medical documents.