Table 2.
Descriptive characteristics of variables potentially related to the data discrepancy between clinics' outpatient books and government statistics in clinical malaria case reporting made in each month in eight clinics, Honiara, Solomon Islands, 2007.
| Continuous Variables | Mean (Standard Error) | P-value╙ | |||
| (a) Average numbers of patients (per nurse and day) | 24.1 (0.9) | < 0.001§ | |||
| (b)Illegible handwriting (per 100 patients) | 6.2 (0.3) | 0.01** | |||
| (c)Omitted data of diagnosis(per 100 patients) | 3.7 (0.2) | < 0.001§ | |||
| (d)Omitted data of slide confirmation(per 100 patients) | 6.2 (0.4) | < 0.01§ | |||
| (e)Omitted data of treatment (per 100 patients) | 3.2 (0.2) | < 0.001 ** | |||
| (f) Registered nurses among all nurses and nurse aides (%) | 34.6 (0.9) | < 0.001§ | |||
| Ordinal Variables | No. (%) | P-value╙ | |||
| (Almost) Never | Sometimes | Often | (Almost) Always | ||
| (g)Registered nurse filled in Reports | 19(19.8%) | 43(44.8%) | 0(0%) | 34(35.4%) | < 0.001§ |
| (h)Use of tally sheets | 19(19.8%) | 31(32.3%) | 0(0%) | 46(47.9%) | < 0.001§ |
| (i)Daily counts of cases | 42 (43.8%) | 27(28.1%) | 18(18.8%) | 9 (9.4%) | < 0.001§ |
| (j)Shared official definition of clinical malaria | 59 (61.5%) | 0(0%) | 15 (15.6%) | 22 (22.9%) | < 0.001§ |
| (k)Weekly meeting by nurses and microscopists | 50 (52.1%) | 7 (7.3%) | 12 (12.5%) | 27 (28.1%) | < 0.001§ |
| Categorical variables | No. (%) | ||||
| (l)Clinic level* | Area Health Clinic (AHC) | Area Health Clinic (AHC) | |||
| 72(75%) | 24(25%) | - | |||
| (m)Rainy season | Seven months (from November to March) 56(58.3%) | - | |||
(n = 96 in total, n = 12 per clinic).
(Alphabet) is correspondent to the text.
╙ P value comparing the mean among eight clinics
** Repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) for normally distributed variables
§ Friedman's ANOVA test
† Tally sheets are the sheets with a lot of blank circles divided into ten to help nurses to count cases by marking circles according to the records in outpatient books. They were distributed by the government to all clinics.
*Two clinics, Kukum and Rove, are upper clinics called Area Health Clinics (AHC) given more human and material resources by the government, compared to other six clinics called Urban Health Clinics (UHC).