Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
-
RATIONALE, AIM AND OBJECTIVES: Day surgery patients are discharged after a short period of postoperative surveillance, and reliable and valid instruments for assessment at home are needed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the post-discharge surgical recovery (PSR) scale, an instrument to monitor the patient's recovery after day surgery, in terms of data quality, internal consistency, dimensionality and responsiveness. ⋯ The Swedish version of the PSR scale demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties of data quality, internal consistency, dimensionality and responsiveness. In addition to previous findings, these results strengthen the PSR scale as a potential instrument of recovery at home.
-
National surveys of patients' experiences of English cancer services found improvements between 2000 and 2004, particularly in the areas of information, communication and trust in professionals. ⋯ To provide information useful for quality improvement future surveys will need to sample larger numbers of patients from most hospital trusts, including patients with less common cancers or receiving palliative care. Surveys should also sample patients at a consistent time after diagnosis and feedback results more rapidly to services.
-
Falls and fall-related injuries are major problems in hospitals. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of fall prevention guidelines on falls and fall-related injuries in hospitals. ⋯ The present results of the multilevel analysis show that falls and fall-related injuries can be reduced by the implementation of fall prevention guidelines.
-
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 sets out the requirement for the introduction of responsible officers for the NHS. The paper states that these individuals will be responsible for ensuring that doctors who are revalidated meet the required standards. It is not known how well prepared prospective responsible officers are for their new role. ⋯ We found important issues regarding the arrangements for revalidation which have not previously been described which may impact on the effectiveness of prospective responsible officers.
-
As the discipline of health services research has developed so methods of evaluation have become increasingly sophisticated; where once a 'simple' randomized controlled trial would have been considered the gold standard, now terms such as 'complex interventions' and the 'cluster randomized controlled trial' are hot topics for discussion. The challenges involved in carrying out such studies are rarely presented. In this paper we discuss some of these challenges in relation to ethical and statistical considerations, and illustrate them using a recently completed cluster randomized controlled trial of a decision tool for early labour.