Australian health review : a publication of the Australian Hospital Association
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To determine the accuracy of predictions of the need for hospital admission and, if admitted, length of stay (LOS) made early in an emergency attendance by emergency department (ED) doctors, nurses, patients and relatives, and the characteristics of ED presentations predictive of admission and short stays (
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Benchmarking of performance indicators in the mental health field is gaining currency in Australia as a strategy for improving service quality. ⋯ It is possible and useful to collect and evaluate performance data for mental health services. While services appear similar enough to benchmark, information related to both casemix and service characteristics needs to be included in benchmarking data to understand the factors that produce differences in service performance.
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The evaluation of a new model of care for older people with complex health care needs that aimed to reduce their use of acute hospital services. ⋯ A model of care that facilitates access to community health services and provides coordination between existing services reduces hospital demand.
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As Australian medical educators become more accustomed to the increasing pressures imposed upon them, there is a risk that the traditional educational relationship between a student and his or her teacher is replaced by a pure transactional relationship between a customer and his or her supplier. A large sample of medical students surveyed revealed that medical students seem to value directed rather than independent learning. ⋯ Medical students do not seem to have strong preferences when it comes to assessment, contradicting some of the fundamental suggestions of the recent educational literature, in which assessment is often viewed as a key element in the formation and the direction of learning. The fact that medical students seem to reject many of the paradigms of the psychology-based educational literature, at least based on the large sample surveyed at the University of New South Wales, suggests that caution should be used in the development of training programs for teachers in medical faculties, and that learning and teaching should ensure that students' expectations and teachers' training do not mismatch.