Financial risk of emergency abdominal surgery: a cross sectional study from Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery suggested six indicators every country should use to measure their surgical systems. One of these indicators, catastrophic expenditure (CE), is defined as money paid for service which amounts to more than 10% of the patient's total annual expenditure, or more than 40% of annual non-food household expenditure. Ethiopian Ministry of Health has set a target of 100% protection from CE by 2030. However, so far there is lack of studies that assess financial risk of surgery. METHODS: Using a cross sectional study design, financial risk assessment was carried out on 142 patients from Yekatit 12 and Zewditu Memorial hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from May 15 to September 15, 2021. RESULTS: Appendectomy (69.0%), emergency laparotomy (26.1%) and cholecystectomy (4.9%) resulted in mean direct medical expenditures of 111.7USD, 200.70USD and 224.60USD, respectively. Medications and imaging accounted for 60.8 and 13.9% of total treatment cost. By applying the two definitions of catastrophic expenditure, 67.6 and 62.7% of patients sustained CE, respectively Overall rates of CE across procedures were 67.3 and 59.1% for appendectomy, 70.2 and 70.2% for laparotomy, 57.0 and 71.2% for cholecystectomy. Thirty-five (24.6%) patients had some form of insurance, with Community Based Health Insurance being the most common form (57%). Insured patients were less likely to sustain CE with both definitions (AOR 0.09, p = 0.002 and AOR 0.10, p = 0.006 respectively). CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Substantial proportion of patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery sustain CE in Addis Ababa. Medications and imaging take major share of total cost mainly because patients have to acquire them from private set ups. Policy makers should work on availing medications and imaging in public hospitals as well as expand insurance and other forms of surgical care financing to protect patients from CE.

Nurses' competency on electrocardiography interpretation in adult emergency room: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2021. Multicenter cross-sectional study.

AIM: This study aimed to assess the proficiency of nurses in interpreting electrocardiogram within the adult emergency units of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the year 2021. METHODS: This institutional-based descriptive, cross-sectional study involved 175 nurses from five randomly selected hospitals' adult emergency units. Semi-structured, self-administered questionnaires were used for data collection. Data were entered into Epi-Data and analyzed using SPSS version 26. Fisher's exact test identified statistical significance between dependent and independent variables at a p-value < 0.05. RESULTS: Out of 203 respondents, 175 participated actively, yielding a response rate of 86.2%. Among these nurses, 159 (90.9%) were deemed not competent (scoring < 65%), with a mean score of 6.82 ± 3.65 SD. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No patient or public contribution was included in this study. CONCLUSION: The overall competency level in electrocardiogram interpretation among nurses is significantly poor. This indicates that most nurses in the emergency units are unable to accurately interpret ECG monitoring, potentially leading to the failure to recognize signs of arrhythmias, electrolyte disturbances, and other cardiac abnormalities. Consequently, this may result in inappropriate patient care and increased mortality rates. Education and training were identified as key factors in enhancing their competency.