Epidemiol Prev
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This article describes the phases of development and assessment of a continuous quality improvement program focused on hospital end-of-life care for cancer patients. Although most patients would like to die at home, a high proportion still die in hospital. Many studies showed non appropriate end-of-life care for patients dying in hospital and their families. ⋯ According to the results from the previous phases, a cluster randomised trial was designed with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the LCP-I Program in improving quality of end-of-life care (phase III). This study is ongoing and final results will be available by 2012. In conclusion, development and assessment of the LCP Program in Italy shows that it is possible to perform studies aimed at assessing complex interventions in end-of-life care.
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Review Comparative Study
[Impact of the Italian smoking ban and comparison with the evaluation of the Scottish ban].
The Italian smoking ban entered into force on January 10th, 2005, and banned smoking from enclosed workplaces and hospitality premises (HPs), even though provided separated smoking areas. Actually, only 1-2%of HPs built these areas, while no figures are available on the prevalence of smoking rooms in workplaces other than HPs. Italians were more in favour of the law after the ban. ⋯ The Italian evaluation devoted more attention to distal (reduction of hospital admissions) and incidental effects of the law (trend in smoking prevalence, cigarette consumption). Qualitative studies in bars, homes, and communities recording changes in attitudes on tobacco smoking after the introduction of the ban, were conducted only in Scotland. In Italy the main problem was to develop and fund a network of researchers involved on a shared evaluation plan.