Bmc Health Serv Res
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Comparative StudySecondary care intervals before and after the introduction of urgent referral guidelines for suspected cancer in Denmark: a comparative before-after study.
Urgent referral for suspected cancer was implemented in Denmark on 1 April 2008 to reduce the secondary care interval (i.e. the time interval from the general practitioner's first referral of a patient to secondary health care until treatment is initiated). However, knowledge about the association between the secondary care interval and urgent referral remains scarce. The aim of this study was to analyse how the secondary care interval changed after the introduction of urgent referral. ⋯ Urgent referral had a positive effect on the secondary care interval, and Vejle Hospital remarkably managed to shorten the intervals even further. This finding indicates that the shorter secondary care intervals not only result from the urgent referral guidelines, but also involve other factors.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Prospective cohort study protocol to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Quality of Trauma Care Patient-Reported Experience Measure (QTAC-PREM).
Patient-centeredness is a key component of health care quality. However, patient-centered measures of quality have not been developed in injury care. In response to this challenge, we developed the Quality of Trauma Adult Care Patient-Reported Experience Measure (QTAC-PREM) to measure injured patient experiences with trauma care and pilot-tested the instrument at a single Level 1 trauma centre. The objective of this study is to test the reliability, validity, and feasibility of the QTAC-PREM in multiple Canadian trauma centers and to refine the measure based on the results. ⋯ A reliable and valid measure of patient reported experiences with injury care may be a valuable tool to evaluate quality of care and guide improvement efforts.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Network analysis of team communication in a busy emergency department.
The Emergency Department (ED) is consistently described as a high-risk environment for patients and clinicians that demands colleagues quickly work together as a cohesive group. Communication between nurses, physicians, and other ED clinicians is complex and difficult to track. A clear understanding of communications in the ED is lacking, which has a potentially negative impact on the design and effectiveness of interventions to improve communications. We sought to use Social Network Analysis (SNA) to characterize communication between clinicians in the ED. ⋯ We show that SNA measurement techniques provide a comprehensive view of ED communication patterns. Our use of SNA revealed that frequency of communication as a measure of interdependencies between ED clinicians varies by day/night shift and over time.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Comparative StudyDeveloping a patient and family-centred approach for measuring the quality of injury care: a study protocol.
Quality indicators (QI) are used in health care to measure quality of service and performance improvement. Health care professionals and organizations caring for patients with injuries need information regarding the quality of care provided and the outcomes experienced in order to target improvement efforts. However, very little is known about the quality of injury care provided to individual patients and populations and even less about patients' perspectives on quality of care. The absence of QIs that incorporate patient or family preferences, needs or values has been identified as an important gap in the science and practice of injury quality improvement. The primary objective of this research protocol is to develop and evaluate the first set of patient and family-centred QIs of injury care for critically injured patients ⋯ Measuring the quality of injury care is but a first step towards improving patient outcomes. This research will develop the first set of patient and family-centred QIs of injury care. To improve patient care, we need accessible, reliable indicators of quality that are important to patients, and that can then be used to establish quality of care benchmarks, to flag potential problems or successes, follow trends over time and identify disparities across organizations, communities, populations and regions.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Developing content for a process-of-care checklist for use in intensive care units: a dual-method approach to establishing construct validity.
In the intensive care unit (ICU), checklists can be used to support the delivery of quality and consistent clinical care. While studies have reported important benefits for clinical checklists in this context, lack of formal validity testing in the literature prompted the study aim; to develop relevant 'process-of-care' checklist statements, using rigorously applied and reported methods that were clear, concise and reflective of the current evidence base. These statements will be sufficiently instructive for use by physicians during ICU clinical rounds. ⋯ Statements were developed as the most clear, concise, evidence-informed and instructive statements for use during clinical rounds in an ICU. Initial evidence in support of the checklist's construct validity was established prior to further prospective evaluation in the same ICU.