Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
-
The physiotherapy profession did not escape the effects of racially based segregatory practises. While numerous strategies and initiatives have been employed to redress the inequities of the past, the extent of demographic transformation within the physiotherapy profession in South Africa remains uncertain. Transformation is defined in this article as an intentional change aimed at addressing inequalities and the ultimate goal is for population group and gender profiles of higher education graduates to be representative of the national epidemiological profile. This paper describes the demographic patterns of Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) registered physiotherapists from 1938 to 2018. ⋯ There has been a steady transformation of the South African physiotherapy graduates composition regarding population categories and gender. However, it is clear that much more than selection criteria is needed to transform the profession in a way that is nationally representative, remain actively accountable for transformation and apt for local context.
-
Representation of benefits and harms associated with specific interventions in an understandable and comparable way is crucial for informed decision making that clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) aim to enhance. Therefore, we investigated how statements concerning the effects of interventions considered and described benefits and harms, magnitude of effect and its uncertainty, numeric and non-numeric information, and outcomes in Finnish CPGs. ⋯ In the Finnish CPGs, the statements were rarely framed with both absolute and relative numeric measures of an intervention's effect. Harms were rarely reported with a grade indicating the level of evidence. The users of CPGs would benefit from more consistent and understandable framing of statements considering both benefits and harms of interventions.
-
There are various models attempting to predict 30-day readmissions of acutely admitted internal medicine patients. However, it is uncertain how to create a parsimonious index that has equivalent predictive ability and can be extrapolated to other settings. ⋯ An index derived from the number of previous hospital admissions, days since last admission, age, and length of stay in days differentiated between the risks of readmission within 30 days without the need for discharge diagnosis and laboratory variables.
-
Empathic attitudes and behaviours of midwives directly affect obstetric outcomes. The study aims to examine the effect of empathy training on the empathic communication skills of midwives and the childbirth satisfaction of primiparous mothers. ⋯ The empathy training improved both the empathy skills of midwives, and translated to improved maternal satisfaction with birth among their mothers. It is recommended to increase the number of follow-ups to evaluate the long-term effect of empathy training.