Interspecialty referrals: evaluation of quality and pattern of referral letters to an oral and maxillofacial surgery clinic.

Referral letters are the most desirable means of communication between medical practitioners in patients' management, however many studies have indicated that this form of communication is often lacking in essential information necessary for prompt treatment. This study sets out primarily to evaluate the quality and secondarily pattern of referrals from other specialties within the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria, to the department of Oral and Maxillofacial surgery of the same institution. The information sought for in each letter were patient's name, age, sex: is the letter dated or not, referring department, history ofcomplaint, management already instituted, reason for the referral, name and the signature of the referring doctor. Each of these ten items was scored I when present and 0 when absent. Thus, a maximum score of 10 was recorded when all items were present. Referrals were graded into grade A-D. A being referrals with the maximum score of 10, B: scores of 7-9, C: scores of 4-6, D: scores of 0-3. There were only 9 grade A letters accounting for 3% of the total. Majority of the letters, 201 (77%) were of grade B while the remaining 52 (20%) were of grade C. The accident and emergency unit provided most of the letters i.e. 176 accounting for 67.7%. Plastic surgery and Accident/ Emergency units individually produced 3 out of the 9 grade A letters, however, no statistically significant association was found between specialty units and grades of letters.