Is the addition of a standard HIV educational comment to virology laboratory reports effective in changing requesting behaviour?

Background: It is not known whether the addition of general educational comments to virology laboratory reports can influence the requesting behaviour of practitioners.

Objectives: To establish if there is any change in requesting behaviour after the addition of a standard comment to virology laboratory reports highlighting the need to include HIV testing when investigating patients presenting with a glandular fever (GF)-like illness.

Study design: A standard comment to encourage inclusion of HIV testing was added to all GF screening reports from April 2010. The proportion of GF screening samples with concomitant HIV test requests before and after the introduction of the standard comment were compared over a 1 year period.

Results: A significant increase in concomitant HIV requests from 9.5% to 19.6% on GF screening samples from primary care practitioners was observed after the addition of the standard comment (p<0.0000001). This effect peaked at 5 months and although it waned, requests at one year were still higher than at baseline.

Conclusions: Addition of a general HIV educational comment to virology laboratory reports is effective in changing requesting behaviour.