Bmc Health Serv Res
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2006
The use of sleep aids among Emergency Medicine residents: a web based survey.
Sleepiness is a significant problem among residents due to chronic sleep deprivation. Recent studies have highlighted medical errors due to resident sleep deprivation. We hypothesized residents routinely use pharmacologic sleep aids to manage their sleep deprivation and reduce sleepiness. ⋯ Even with a low response rate, sleep aid use among EM residents may be common. How this affects performance, well-being, and health remains unknown.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2006
Exploring if day and time of admission is associated with average length of stay among inpatients from a tertiary hospital in Singapore: an analytic study based on routine admission data.
It has been postulated that patients admitted on weekends or after office hours may experience delays in clinical management and consequently have longer length of stay (LOS). We investigated if day and time of admission is associated with LOS in Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), a 1,400 bed acute care tertiary hospital serving the central and northern regions of Singapore. ⋯ Cases admitted over a weekend, eve of holiday, in the afternoons, and after office hours, do have an increased LOS. Further research is needed to identify processes contributing to the above phenomenon.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2006
Acute psychiatric admissions from an out-of-hours Casualty Clinic; how do referring doctors and admitting specialists agree?
Over the last decades there has been an increasing pressure on the acute psychiatric wards in Norway. The major contributor to psychiatric acute admissions at the University Hospital of North Norway in the city of Tromsø in 2001 was the GP-based Tromsø Casualty Clinic, only open out-of-hours. We explored all acute psychiatric referrals from Tromsø Casualty Clinic in 2001. The purpose of the study was to characterize the admissions and assess the agreement between the referring doctors and the hospital specialists according to the need for hospitalization, agreement on application of the law and the diagnostic evaluation to assess whether the admissions were appropriate. ⋯ The casualty clinic physicians and the hospital specialists mostly agreed in their evaluation of patients indicating that most of the admissions were appropriate. The police was more often involved in the involuntary admissions than intended in the law. The proportion of patients with substance abuse was significant. Alternative treatment strategies should be developed for non-psychotic patients in need of short-term stays.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2006
Comparative StudyCharacteristics of Primary Care Trusts in financial deficit and surplus - a comparative study in the English NHS.
Recently the financial status of primary care trusts has come under considerable scrutiny by the government, and financial deficits have been blamed on poor local management of resources. This paper examines the factors that differ between those Primary Care Trusts (PCT) in financial deficit and those in surplus, using readily available data at PCT level. PCTs are the National Health Service organisations in England responsible for improving the health of their population, developing primary and community health services, and commissioning secondary care services. ⋯ The two groups of PCTs serve two distinct populations with marked differences between the two. Deficit PCTs tend to be in relatively affluent and rural areas. Poor management alone is unlikely to be the cause of deficits, and potential reasons for deficits including rurality and increased demand for health services in more affluent communities need further in-depth studies.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2006
Development and preliminary validation of a Greek-language outpatient satisfaction questionnaire with principal components and multi-trait analyses.
In the recent years there is a growing interest in Greece concerning the measurement of the satisfaction of patients who are visiting the outpatient clinics of National Health System (NHS) general acute hospitals. The aim of this study is therefore to develop a patient satisfaction questionnaire and provide its preliminary validation. ⋯ The instrument appears to be reliable and valid regarding the pure outpatient experience, whereas more research employing larger samples is required in order to establish the apparent psychometric properties of the complementary radiographic and laboratory-testing process, which is only relevant to about 25% of the subjects analysed here.