An evidence-based medicine audit of the ophthalmic emergency services unit of King Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH).

PURPOSE: To improve the interventions provided for patients presenting with acute ophthalmic conditions to the ophthalmic emergency unit through applying the best available evidences from quality literature for managing such conditions.

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study at a tertiary eye care university hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, involving a two-phase audit of diagnosis-intervention was conducted. The first phase was done retrospectively for the duration from April 1 to May 30, 2014, after disseminating the results of the first phase to King Abdulaziz University Hospital ophthalmology department staff, and the second phase was done retrospectively for the duration from November 1 to December 30, 2015. The validity of outcomes was assessed through a literature search using Medline and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The participants were masked on the study objectives to avoid Hawthorne's phenomenon (prescribing bias).

RESULTS: In the first part of the audit, 73.2% out of 355 interventions were found to be evidence based. There was notable improvement of 80.9% in the number of evidence-based interventions in the second part of the audit. This improvement was statistically significant (p = 0.017).

CONCLUSION: Evidence-based medicine audit can be a helpful tool to assess the performance and can lead to quality improve of the provided care by reducing the number of medical errors and refining medical decisions and interventions.