Identification of Youth who Have Deliberately Self Poisoned – a Medical Records Audit in University Teaching Hospitals

A descriptive, cross sectional, retrospective audit of admission records & hospital casualty cards was undertaken to determine the accuracy of identification of cases of deliberate self-poisoning (DSP) among youth admitted for self-poisoning. The diagnostic code of DSP admissions was found to be low in sensitivity, (50% were wrongly coded as accidental) & high in specificity (only one was wrongly coded as deliberate). The authors conclude that the misclassification rate suggests that DSP admission rates may be underestimated by 100%.