International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care
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Incidence of adverse events (AEs) among home care patients and preventability ratings were estimated. Risk factors, AE types and factors associated with AEs were identified. ⋯ Providing health care through home care programs creates unintended harm to patients. The incidence rate of AEs of 13.2% suggests a significant number of home care patients experience AEs, one-third of which were considered preventable. Improvements in patient and informal caregiver education, skill development and clinical planning may be useful interventions to reduce AEs.
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Int J Qual Health Care · Feb 2013
The effect of a workflow-based response system on hospital-wide voluntary incident reporting rates.
Hospital incident reporting systems are usually evaluated on their theoretical benefit to the hospital or increase in reporting rates alone. ⋯ The addition of the workflow-based response system to the hospital incident reporting system significantly increased hospital-wide voluntary incident report rates at all incident injury levels.
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Int J Qual Health Care · Feb 2013
Quality and safety of hospital discharge: a study on experiences and perceptions of patients, relatives and care providers.
To identify barriers experienced and perceived at discharge by physicians, nurses, patients and relatives. ⋯ This is the first study that provides a clear picture of the experiences and perceptions of stakeholders regarding handovers at hospital discharge. Lack of knowledge, understanding and interest between hospital and community care providers are important causes for ineffective and unsafe discharge. The study suggests that improvement efforts should be focused more on these aspects, as primary conditions for improving hospital discharge.
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Int J Qual Health Care · Feb 2013
Human factors in clinical handover: development and testing of a 'handover performance tool' for doctors' shift handovers.
To develop and test a handover performance tool (HPT) able to help clinicians to systematically assess the quality and safety of shift handovers. ⋯ Communication determined the majority of handover quality. Teamwork and situation awareness also provided an independent contribution to the overall quality rating. The HPT has demonstrated good validity and reliability providing evidence that it can be easily used by raters with different backgrounds and in several clinical settings. The HPT could be utilized to assess doctors' handover quality systematically, as well as teaching tool in medical schools or in continuing professional development programmes for self-reflective practice.