Journal of general internal medicine
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The US outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) accelerated rapidly over a short time to become a public health crisis. ⋯ From the onset to the acceleration phase, participants increasingly perceived COVID-19 to be a serious public health threat, reported more changes to their daily routine and plans, and reported greater preparedness. The proportion of respondents who believed they were "not at all likely" to get the virus decreased slightly (24.9 to 22.4%; p = 0.04), but there was no significant change in the proportion of those who were unable to accurately identify ways to prevent infection (29.2 to 25.7%; p 0.14). In multivariable analyses, black adults and those with lower health literacy were more likely to report less perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 (black adults: relative risk (RR) 1.62, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.07-2.44, p = 0.02; marginal health literacy: RR 1.96, 95% CI 1.26-3.07, p < 0.01). Individuals with low health literacy remained more likely to feel unprepared for the outbreak (RR 1.80, 95% CI 1.11-2.92, p = 0.02) and to express confidence in the federal government response (RR 2.11, 95% CI 1.49-3.00, p < 0.001) CONCLUSIONS: Adults at higher risk for COVID-19 continue to lack critical knowledge about prevention. While participants reported greater changes to daily routines and plans, disparities continued to exist in perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 and in preparedness. Public health messaging to date may not be effectively reaching vulnerable communities.
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Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers (HCW) is crucial. ⋯ In a large healthcare system, HCW had similar odds for testing SARS-CoV-2 positive, but lower odds of hospitalization compared to non-HCW. Patient-facing HCW had higher odds of a positive test. These results are key to understanding HCW risk mitigation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Since 2011, aviation has revolutionized their approach to safety. The aviation industry has adopted a multi-faceted approach to improve safety through decreasing duty hour limits and implementing processes to mitigate fatigue-related errors as well as creating cultural shifts in responsibility for safety. ⋯ Key advancements in aviation fatigue mitigation and implications for residency education are explored in this article. Scientifically based processes to optimize duty hours, quality-improvement strategies to iteratively monitor and reform duty limits, systematic change focusing on a just culture, and financial disincentives and incentives as a catalyst for change are discussed.
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) could devote resources to collate and assess quality improvement studies to support learning health systems (LHS) but there is no reliable data on the consistency of data extraction for important criteria. ⋯ Creating explicit instructions for extracting data for quality improvement studies helps enhance the consistency of data extraction. This is important because it is difficult for LHS to vet these quality improvement studies on their own and they would value AHRQ's support in that regard.
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Most guidelines recommend against PSA-based screening for prostate cancer in men ≥ 70 years of age. Adherence to these guidelines is variable. ⋯ Following activation of a BPA within the EMR, the rates of inappropriate PSA testing significantly declined by 58.5% in men ≥ 70 years of age and temporal variation was reduced.