The Surgical Tool for Auditing Records (STAR), a novel tool for the assessment of the quality of surgical note keeping

Over the years, it has become quite evident that excellent medical note keeping is essential across all medical and surgical specialties. It has been proven to improve patient care and is an essential element of patient safety. Unfortunately it is often determined to be inadequate and causal in adverse events at medico-legal reviews. Methods of auditing these notes vary between hospitals; current methods and tools are usually considered to be very extensive and tedious to be performed on a regular basis. The authors present a novel scoring tool that is comprehensive, reliable, easily reproducible.