The Medical journal of Australia
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Observational Study
Do outlier inpatients experience more emergency calls in hospital? An observational cohort study.
To determine the effect of spending time as an outlier (ie, an inpatient who spends time away from his or her "home" ward) on the frequency of emergency calls for patients admitted to a tertiary referral hospital. ⋯ This study found a strong association between time spent away from a patient's home ward and the number of emergency calls. We postulate that outlier patients are at risk as they may have therapeutic and monitoring needs that are only available on their home ward. With increasing pressure to move patients out of the emergency department, the number of outlier patients may increase.
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To identify areas for improvement in outcomes in retrieved newborns by reviewing newborn retrieval activity and evaluating potentially avoidable retrievals from each referring hospital stratified by the level of service delivery over the study period. ⋯ Potentially avoidable retrievals were a small but significant proportion and are becoming less frequent. Discretionary caesarean is the most common cause of potentially avoidable retrieval. Strict implementation of the elective caesarean section policy directive has the potential to reduce morbidity and the costs related to retrieval.
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Maladministrations in nuclear medicine: revelations from the Australian Radiation Incident Register.
To describe the incidence, type, causes and consequences of nuclear medicine maladministrations. ⋯ The ARIR provides unique insight into the type, causes and complications of maladministrations in Australia. Nearly all maladministrations occur in a diagnostic context, and the risk of patient harm appears low. Among active causes, radiopharmaceutical preparation and dispensation, and medical supervision before injection merit attention. The ARIR could be refined by attending to latent errors, addressing possible underreporting and securing more complete Medicare data.
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To estimate the cost of resources required to deliver a program to assess international medical graduates (IMGs) in Newcastle, Australia, known as the Workplace Based Assessment (WBA) Program. ⋯ The cost per candidate to the health system of this intensive WBA program for IMGs is small.
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To investigate whether the introduction of tobacco plain packaging in Australia from 1 October 2012 was associated with a change in the number of calls to the smoking cessation helpline, Quitline, and to compare this with the impact of the introduction of graphic health warnings from 1 March 2006. ⋯ There has been a sustained increase in calls to the Quitline after the introduction of tobacco plain packaging. This increase is not attributable to anti-tobacco advertising activity, cigarette price increases nor other identifiable causes. This is an important incremental step in comprehensive tobacco control.