Bmc Health Serv Res
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Comparative StudyEnhancing screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment among socioeconomically disadvantaged patients: study protocol for a knowledge exchange intervention involving patients and physicians.
Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral for Treatment (SBIRT) is an effective approach for managing alcohol and other drug misuse in primary care; however, uptake into routine care has been limited. Uptake of SBIRT by healthcare providers may be particularly problematic for disadvantaged populations exhibiting alcohol and other drug problems, and requires creative approaches to enhance patient engagement. This knowledge translation project developed and evaluated a group of patient and health care provider resources designed to enhance the capacity of health care providers to use SBIRT and improve patient engagement with health care. ⋯ Effective knowledge translation requires careful consideration of the intended knowledge recipient's context and needs. Knowledge translation in disadvantaged settings may be optimized by using a community-based participatory approach to resource development that takes into account relevant patient engagement issues.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Clinicians' views on improving inter-organizational care transitions.
Patients with complex health conditions frequently require care from multiple providers and are particularly vulnerable to poorly executed transitions from one healthcare setting to another. Poorly executed care transitions can result in negative patient outcomes (e.g. medication errors, delays in treatment) and increased healthcare spending due to re-hospitalization or emergency room visits by patients. Little is known about care transitions from acute care to complex continuing care and rehabilitation settings. Thus, a qualitative study was undertaken to explore clinicians' perceptions of strategies aimed at improving patient care transitions from acute care hospitals to complex continuing care and rehabilitation healthcare organizations. ⋯ Our study provides insights from the perspectives of multiple clinicians that have important implications for health care leaders and clinicians in their efforts to enhance inter-organizational care transitions. Of particular importance is the need to have a collective and collaborative approach amongst clinicians during the inter-organizational care transition process. Study findings also suggest that the written patient transfer record needs to be augmented with a verbal report whereby the receiving clinician has an opportunity to discuss with a clinician from the acute care hospital the patient's status on discharge and plan of care. Integral to future research efforts is designing and testing out interventions to optimize inter-organizational care transitions and feedback loops for complex medical patients.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Measuring safety culture in Dutch primary care: psychometric characteristics of the SCOPE-PC questionnaire.
Patient safety has been a priority in primary healthcare in the last years. The prevailing culture is seen as an important condition for patient safety in practice and several tools to measure patient safety culture have therefore been developed. Although Dutch primary care consists of different professions, such as general practice, dental care, dietetics, physiotherapy and midwifery, a safety culture questionnaire was only available for general practices. The purpose of this study was to modify and validate this existing questionnaire to a generic questionnaire for all professions in Dutch primary care. ⋯ The SCOPE-PC questionnaire has sound psychometric characteristics for use by the different professions in Dutch primary care to gain insight in their safety culture.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Patients' experience and satisfaction with GP led walk-in centres in the UK; a cross sectional study.
GP led walk-in centres were established in the UK in 2009. Around 150 such clinics were initially planned to open. Their purpose is to provide a primary health care service to complement the urgent care services provided by Emergency Departments (ED), to reduce unnecessary patient attendance at ED, and to increase accessibility of health care services. The objectives of this study were to determine patient satisfaction and experiences with GP led walk-in centres in the UK. ⋯ The GP led walk-in centres increased access to GP care and most of the patients were satisfied with the service.
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Bmc Health Serv Res · Jan 2013
Psychometric properties of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, HSOPSC, applied on a large Swedish health care sample.
A Swedish version of the USA Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality "Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture" (S-HSOPSC) was developed to be used in both hospitals and primary care. Two new dimensions with two and four questions each were added as well as one outcome measure. This paper describes this Swedish version and an assessment of its psychometric properties which were tested on a large sample of responses from personnel in both hospital and primary care. ⋯ The S-HSOPSC, consisting of 14 dimensions, 48 items and 3 single-item outcome measures, is used both in hospitals and in primary care settings in Sweden for different purposes. This version of the original American instrument has acceptable construct validity and internal consistency when tested on large datasets of first-time responders from both hospitals and primary care centres. One common instrument for measurements of patient safety culture in both hospitals and primary care settings is an advantage since it enables comparisons between sectors and assessments of national patient safety improvement programs. Future research into this version of the instrument includes comparing results from patient safety culture measurements with other outcomes in relation to safety improvement strategies.