International Journal for Quality in Health Care This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Quality gap in venous thromboembolism prophylaxis practices in inpatients: Assessment of prophylaxis practices in a University Hospital
DiscussionUnderuse constitutes a major challenge in our hospital but differing from other institutions, overuse is not a significant issue. Further studies are needed whether VTE prophylaxis improvement implementations uniformly increase appropriate VTE use. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 16, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Improving primary care access to respirologists using eConsult
ConclusionsParticipation in eConsult services can improve timely access to respirologists while potentially avoiding clinic visits and significantly impacting referring PCPs clinical course of action. Using the most common clinical topics and types of questions for CME planning should be considered. Future research may include a cost analysis and provider perspectives on the role of eConsult in respirology care. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 16, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Appropriateness of imaging decisions for low back pain presenting to the emergency department: a retrospective chart review study
ConclusionIn this study of emergency care, there was evidence of not only overuse of lumbar imaging but also underuse through failure to request lumbar imaging when indicated or referral for an uninformative imaging modality. These three issues seem more important targets for quality improvement than solely focusing on overuse. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 14, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Factors associated with self-reported medical errors among healthcare workers: a cross-sectional study from Oman
ConclusionImproving patient safety has become paramount in the modern age of quality improvement. In this study, medical errors reported by healthcare workers were strongly related to their degree of burnout and exposure to work-related bullying practice. This study makes a unique and tangible contribution to the current knowledge of medical errors among healthcare workers in Oman. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 8, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Understanding complaints made about surgical departments in a UK district general hospital
ConclusionThe profile of complaints made about surgical departments is similar to that of non-surgical departments in other studies. Clinical issues represented only the third largest cause of complaints. More complaints implicated patient –staff communication, and around half implicated management-related issues. Improving staff communication training, clinical standards and hospital administration continues to represent opportunities to enhance the patients’ overall experience of surgical care. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 7, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

The cross-national applicability of lean implementation measures and hospital performance measures: a case study of Finland and the USA
ConclusionsLean implementation measures are highly relevant in health-care organizations operating in the USA and Finland, as is the applicability of a variety of performance improvement measures. Cross-national benchmarking in lean healthcare is feasible, but a careful assessment of contextual factors, including the health-care system model, and their impact on the applicability and relevance of chosen benchmarking measures is necessary. The differences between the US and Finnish health-care system models is most clearly reflected in financial performance measures and care process measures. (Source: International Journal ...
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 7, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Evaluating health-related quality of life and emotions in Muslim and Jewish kidney transplant patients
ConclusionsOur findings indicate that receiving a graft from an LD contributes to the HRQOL in the physical, psychological and environmental dimensions. Hence, donations from LD should be encouraged, by investing efforts in promoting public awareness of the importance of donating kidneys by LDs. Muslim KT recipients enjoy better physical, social and psychological HRQOL; this difference can be explained by the supportive and embracing familial and social networks characterizing traditional Arab communities. Post-transplantation support programs should be designed in order to provide further support and improve emotional and...
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 7, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Research on obstetric ward planning combining lean thinking and mixed-integer programming
ConclusionAccording to lean thinking, obstetric wards are divided into three types of wards. Obstetricians and midwives work more efficiently and get more rest time. Pregnant women also enjoy more detailed medical services. By modeling the delivery ward allocation problem as a mixed-integer programming problem, we can improve the capacity of the service in obstetric hospitals from a macro perspective. Through GLM regression model analysis, it is conducive to improve the obstetric hospital capacity from the perspective of positive and negative correlation factors. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 6, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Addressing overestimation and insensitivity in the 85% target for average bed occupancy
ConclusionAn unconditional 85% target serves as an overestimate across the vast majority of settings that typically exist in practice. Hospital planners should consider ward size, speciality and capacity-breach tolerance in determining a more sensitive assessment of bed occupancy requirements. This study provides hospital planners with a means to reliably assess the operational performance and readily calculate optimal capacity requirements. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 5, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Patient coaching in secondary care: healthcare professionals ’ views on target group, intervention and coach profile
ConclusionHealthcare professionals believe that patient coaching by a trained professional with medical knowledge could be beneficial to patients who are stressed when visiting a medical specialist. Future research should involve the views of patients on patient coaching, focus on investigating to what extent patient coaching is able to reduce stress and support a patient in processing medical information and the preferred patient coach ’s profile. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 2, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Characteristics of quality activities in a tertiary teaching hospital in Western Australia
ConclusionUnderstanding the characteristics of quality activities from a whole hospital perspective provides insights and informs discussions relating to the efficiency and effectiveness of quality activities in hospitals. Embedding quality activities into everyday business is achievable for hospitals but considerations need to occur on how to sustain staff motivation and enthusiasm by helping individuals and teams reach the ultimate goals for improvement and keeping performance monitoring as close to the real time of care as possible. There is a need to transform QA into quality improvement, with the 90-day cycle being a ...
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - July 2, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Reducing postoperative opioid pill prescribing via a quality improvement approach
ConclusionOur PDSA-like approach led to an acceptable protocol revision resulting in significant reductions in excess pills released into the community. Reducing the quantity of opioids prescribed postoperatively does not increase the percentage of patients taking zero pills postdischarge. To eliminate opioid use may require no-opioid pathways. Our approach can be used in implementing zero opioid discharge plans and can be applied to opioid reduction interventions at other institutions where barriers to reduced prescribing exist. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - June 30, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Outcomes of a multicomponent safe surgery intervention in Tanzania ’s Lake Zone: a prospective, longitudinal study
ConclusionOur findings demonstrate the benefit of the SS2020 approach. Improvement was observed in adherence to safety practices, teamwork and communication, and data quality, and there was a reduction in maternal sepsis rates. Our results support the emerging evidence that improving surgical quality in a low-resource setting requires a focus on the surgical system and culture. Investigation in diverse contexts is necessary to confirm and generalize our results and to understand how to adapt the intervention for different settings. Further work is also necessary to assess the long-term effect and sustainability of such int...
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - June 29, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Evaluating factors associated with the cancellation and delay of elective surgical procedures: a systematic review
ConclusionThis review demonstrates that the main causes for surgery cancellation can be controlled by hospital managers, who can aim to improve areas such as patient flow and capacity management. Ultimately, this will improve the quality of healthcare delivered by hospitals. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - June 26, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research

Barriers to evidence-based practice implementation in physiotherapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis
ConclusionOrganizational issues and methodological skills seem key issues to allow the implementation of EBP, suggesting the need to adopt or enhance organizational and training strategies to facilitate the implementation of the EBP. Quantitative synthesis showed high heterogeneity for all analyses, and therefore, pooled data should be interpreted with caution. (Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care)
Source: International Journal for Quality in Health Care - June 26, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research