Surgical site infections are one of the most common healthcare-associated infections in low- and middle-income countries, which cause prolonged hospital stays and increase patient susceptibility to other nosoc...
Authors: Getnet Gedefaw, Azezu Asires, Shumiye Shiferaw and Dagne Addisu
The risks of poor information transfer across healthcare settings are well documented, particularly for medication. Various patient-held tools have been designed to hold information about patients’ medicines t...
Authors: Tasneem Waly, Sara Garfield and Bryony Dean Franklin
Proper pain assessment is a core component in management of trauma patients but prior literature has suggested that pain management is inadequate in emergency settings. With the development of emergency medici...
Authors: George D. Dilunga, Hendry R. Sawe, Irene B. Kulola, Juma A. Mfinanga, Nanyori J. Lucumay, Elly M. Mulesi and Ellen J. Weber
Digital healthcare information systems impose new demands on healthcare professionals, and information security rules may induce stressful value conflicts, which the professional culture may help professionals...
Authors: Maria Skyvell Nilsson, Marianne Törner and Anders Pousette
The proportion of elderly in the population in Sweden is increasing. Older adults are more vulnerable to disease and disability which in turn increases the prevalence of negative events as pressure ulcers, mal...
Authors: Anna Trinks, Catharina Hägglin, Dennis Nordvall, Elisabet Rothenberg and Helle Wijk
Patients in nursing homes are at risk of adverse events, representing a highly vulnerable group that is chronically weak and cognitively or physically reduced. To prevent adverse events, knowledge of patient s...
Authors: Kathrine Cappelen, Anette Harris and Karina Aase
There are major challenges in ensuring medication safety and preventing adverse drug events in older people. Older people are especially vulnerable to drug-to-drug interactions (DDIs). However, when older pati...
Continuity of patient care is achieved by the clear and concise transfer of patient clinical information from one health care provider to another during handoff. Effective communication is a vital factor in pr...
The objective of this study was to determine whether a cluster scheme of allergic immunotherapy (AIT), starting administration of the therapeutic extract with the highest available concentration vial (vial B) ...
Authors: Francisco Javier Solá Martínez, Virginia de Luque Piñana, Eloina González-Mancebo, Inmaculada Sánchez-Guerrero Villajos, Fernando García-González, Cesárea Sánchez-Hernández, Begoña Soler-López and Nataly Cancelliere
Current guidelines on the management of cancer pain include information referred to integral patient management, in order to get an improvement in their quality of care. The assessment of compliance with the r...
Authors: Francisco Villegas-Estévez, Mª Dolores López-Alarcón, Antonio Javier Jiménez-López, Almudena Sanz-Yagüe and Begoña Soler-López
A wide range of methods have been used to assess the potential clinical importance of medication errors, but it is neither clear which should be used, nor how they compare. In this paper, we compare two method...
Authors: Sandra Fahmy, Sara Garfield, Dominic Furniss, Ann Blandford and Bryony Dean Franklin
Most studies on occupational health and safety in home and community care focus on the health and safety of professional health care workers such as nurses and therapists and very few address the occupational ...
Authors: Margaret Denton, Isik U. Zeytinoglu, Catherine Brookman, Sharon Davies and Patricia Boucher
Immunization rates among the adult population in Saudi Arabia fall below desired targets, urging the need to expand this service in the community. Community pharmacists are recognized as highly accessible heal...
Authors: Bander Balkhi, Hisham Aljadhey, Mansour A. Mahmoud, Maha Alrasheed, Lisa G. Pont, Alemayehu B. Mekonnen and Tariq M. Alhawassi
The threefold aim of this study was to (1) describe attitudes to patient safety among healthcare providers in home health nursing (HHN), (2) investigate differences in attitudes due to age, education level, ye...
Primary care serves as an entry point in the Thai health care system. Whilst effective interventions are provided in the primary care setting, the quality of the services have not been measured or tracked. A n...
Due to new legislation in 2011 and 2013, the Swedish public healthcare system has undergone change as regards incident reporting and supervision. Focus has turned to learning from adverse events and sharing th...
Authors: Jonas Wrigstad, Johan Bergström and Pelle Gustafson
Over many decades, the treatment of Dupuytren’s disease, a fibroproliferative disease of the hand, is the centre of various studies and publications. Surgical intervention has always been the method of choice,...
Authors: Joseph Altziebler, Martin Hubmer, Daryousch Parvizi, Stephan Spendel, Matthias Rab and Lars-Peter Kamolz
Internationally, patient safety is increasingly seen as a priority area, and improving patient safety highly depends on achieving a culture that supports and encourages health care staffs to report their error...
Authors: Alemayehu B. Mekonnen, Andrew J. McLachlan, Jo-anne E. Brien, Desalew Mekonnen and Zenahebezu Abay
Very little research and practical efforts have been undertaken in public sector hospitals of Pakistan to promote error reporting and patient safety culture. Nurses in the country are key informants about the ...
Authors: Sara Rizvi Jafree, Rubeena Zakar, Muhammad Zakria Zakar and Florian Fischer
The complexity of health care systems, the development of clinical approaches, and both scientific and technological advancements give rise to new requirements in clinical risk management. An expedient risk ma...
Authors: Walter Petschnig and Elisabeth Haslinger-Baumann
Progress towards Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 5 is uneven across different countries. Maternal and neonatal deaths occur mainly in developing countries especially in rural areas and among the poor commun...
Authors: Marufa Sultana, Rashidul Alam Mahumud, Nausad Ali, Sayem Ahmed, Ziaul Islam, Jahangir A. M. Khan and Abdur Razzaque Sarker
Certification and accreditation are widely used to achieve quality and safety in health care but are also questioned regarding their assumed effects. This is a challenge for policymakers and managers, since ad...
The International High 5s Project was developed by the World Health Organisation to address major concerns about patient safety. The Standard Operating Protocol (SOP) for ensuring medication accuracy during tr...
Authors: É. Dufay, S. Doerper, B. Michel, C. Roux Marson, A. Grain, A. M. Liebbe, K. Long, N. Tournade, B. Allenet, D. Breilh, I. Alquier and May L. Michelangeli
The medical device industry is a significant and major contributor to global health, yet innovation and research remains suboptimal. Current data focuses on devices, recalls and economics without genuine refle...
Policies for health technologies such as medical devices are essential and contribute to improved quality of healthcare. The regulation, assessment, and management represent important functions of medical devi...
Authors: Myriam Lingg, Anahi Dreser Mansilla, Luis Durán-Arenas and Kaspar Wyss
We could say that external inspections support improvement of healthcare services, but we know little about how. The aim of this study was to increase knowledge about how county governors, as external inspecto...
Patient education facilitates imparting information to the patients and their caregivers by the health professionals and others that alter the patients’ health behaviors, improve their health status and uprigh...
Authors: Rabiul Alam, Mahbuba Rehana and Abdullah Raied
The burden of chronic diseases is rapidly increasing worldwide. In 2005, at least 35 million people of all ages, nationalities, and socioeconomic levels died from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, respiratory d...
Authors: Degefa Helamo, Romedan Delil and Temesgen Dileba
As a major quality management issue, in health care we have to deal with limitless complexity, be it at the level of the individual patient or at the level of the health system. Today complexity is characteriz...
Errors occur frequently in the use of medicines. Pharmacists play a key role in error identification and make appropriate interventions as they work with other healthcare professionals. These error recovery ro...
Authors: Franklin Acheampong, Florence Amah Nkansah and Berko Panyin Anto
As population’s age and people live longer, the burden on acute health care services associated with the frail aged increases. Recognising the needs of this cohort as well as designing and evaluating intervent...
Authors: Alison Craswell, Elizabeth Marsden, Andrea Taylor and Marianne Wallis
Electronic prescribing and medication administration (ePMA) is purported to improve patient safety through a number of benefits including reducing medication errors and facilitating identification of prescribe...
Authors: Astrid Van Wilder, Helen Bell and Bryony Dean Franklin
Saving time means saving neurons in stroke care process. Managerial and organizational solutions that lean the processes should be considered in order to overcome the effects of stroke, which is the second wor...
Authors: Maria Crema, Chiara Verbano, Jacopo Guercini, Caterina Bianciardi and Vincenzo Mezzatesta
Decision-making in health care delivery should be based on the best available current, valid and relevant evidence. Healthcare professionals should therefore be well versed with the skills required to make evi...
Authors: Cathrine Tadyanemhandu, Precious Chiedza Chiyangwa, Samson Chengetanai, Fidelis Chibhabha and Heleen van Aswegen
A1 Meet the needs: Important questions for ICU relatives
Authors: Magdalena M. Hoffmann, Anna K. Holl, Harald Burgsteiner, Thomas Pieber, Philipp Eller, Karin Amrein, Gerald Sendlhofer, Karina Leitgeb, Veronika Gombotz, Peter Tiefenbacher, Lars-Peter Kamolz, Gerald Sendlhofer, Karina Leitgeb, Magdalena Hoffmann, Sabine Papst, Susanne Gasteiner…
Joint Commission predicted that 80 % of the serious safety events occur due to miscommunications among healthcare professionals. Speaking up is one of the critical behaviors of patient safety that displays an ...
Middle managers within healthcare hold a unique position between senior leadership and frontline staff, and may hold a pivotal function in the implementation of quality improvement (QI) projects. This review a...
Diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) are optimum range of values or diagnostic standard data for a particular procedure by which other imaging measurements must be compared for purposes of optimizing patient dos...
Authors: Samuel Anim-Sampong, William K. Antwi, Benard Ohene-Botwe and Rosemary S. Boateng
Although surgical checklist use is not new in Switzerland, compliance and actual use fall short behind expectations taking scientific recommendation as standard. A national media campaign to raise awareness, i...
Authors: Anna C. Mascherek and David L. B. Schwappach
Burn injuries remain a consistent challenge for providers of medical care worldwide and thus the current focus of medical professionals is on improving treatments and reducing the incidence of burns altogether...
Authors: Gabriel Hundeshagen, Paul Wurzer, Abigail A. Forbes, Janos Cambiaso-Daniel, Omar Nunez-Lopez, Ludwik K. Branski and David N. Herndon
Unlike the patient safety research network, no consensus document exists that outlines definitions and concepts that pertain to the workplace violence research environment in the health sector. There are no ag...
In this study, we developed an animated movie as a novel educational tool for fall prevention, and intended for patients and caregivers. We evaluated this new animation, comparing its effectiveness both before...
Accreditation of hospitals and other institutions is a widely used instrument for the quality assurance in health care. However, relevant literature regarding the economic evaluation of hospital accreditation ...
Authors: Nicola Thurneysen, Tima Plank and Stefan Boes
Burns are common injuries that are usually covered with a layer of necrotic tissue called the eschar. Early removal of the eschar is the current standard of care, however, debridement using tangential excision...
Authors: Christian Smolle, Paul Wurzer, Alexandru Tuca, Yaron Shoham, Charles D. Voigt, Ludwik K. Branski, David Lumenta and Lars-Peter Kamolz
Patients with allergies can be protected from potentially life threatening harm by recording their allergen and reaction correctly. Electronic prescribing is being widely implemented with a view to improving p...
Authors: Harriet Launders, Ann Jacklin and Bryony Dean Franklin
