Clinicians’ and Patients’ Factors Affecting the Implementation of Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma Scans Examination in Diagnosing Visceral Injury Among Trauma Patients at the Emergency Department: A retrospective study at a tertiary hospital in northern Tanzania

Background: Focused Assessment using Sonography for Trauma (FAST) is commonly employed to identify visceral organ injuries once traumatic accidents have occurred. Implementation of the FAST scan is used to evaluate the existence of visceral organ injuries, though some clinicians overestimate the real needs of the FAST scan examination when they order it for trauma not involving thoracic and abdominal cavities, and this leads to ineffective implementation of it and leads to delay of patient management and unnecessary costs. Therefore, this study aimed to assess clinicians’ and patients’ factors affecting the implementation of focused assessment with Sonography in trauma (FAST) scan examinations in diagnosing visceral injury among trauma patients at the Emergency Department (EMD) in a tertiary hospital in Northern Tanzania. Methodology: The hospital-based retrospective study was employed at EMD at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), covering a period of one year. Data were obtained using a data extraction tool from patients’ medical files who had an accident and attended the emergency department in one year. At a CI of 95%, data were analyzed using SPSS version 25.0, and statistical significance was set at P