January 30, 2012
“Patients who are discharged from a hospital emergency department sometimes have a poor understanding of how they should care for themselves once they get home, says a new review of more than 50 studies. In an article published in January’s Annals of Emergency Medicine, researchers recommend that doctors provide instructions verbally, in writing and with a visual demonstration whenever possible.
“It doesn’t happen as systematically as I would want it to,” said one of the co-authors, Dr. Stephen Porter of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In pediatrics, for example, he said a lot of medications come in liquid form. Only a minority of parents can figure out a complex dosing question without help, but doctors don’t necessarily show each patient exactly the dose that needs to be given.”
Read about the article on the Canadian Free Press, or visit the Annals of Emergency Medicine, at http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644%2811%2901762-8/fulltext, to see the full article. As this is a subscription resource, contact your institution’s librarian for information on how to access it.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Emergency service, Outpatient care, Safety | No Comments
August 11, 2011
“This How-to Guide is designed to support hospital-based teams and their community partners in codesigning and reliably implementing improved care processes to ensure that patients who have been discharged from the hospital have an ideal transition to the next setting of care (such as a primary care practice, home care, or a skilled nursing facility).
The Guide includes:
- Getting Started: This section lists steps to get started on creating an ideal transition for patients being discharged from the hospital, a post-acute care setting, or a rehabilitation facility.
- Key Changes: Four key recommendations for improving the transition out of the hospital are described, including typical failures encountered, recommended measures to guide improvement, and tools and resources to help teams implement the changes.
- Testing, Implementing, and Spreading Changes: A review of fundamental improvement methods and resources for testing changes before they are implemented and spread more widely throughout the organization.
- Case Studies: The cases provide examples of how organizations implemented the key changes to improve transitions from the hospital.
- Resources and References: Worksheets and other tools to help hospital teams implement the changes, along with a bibliography of selected resources.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Outpatient care, Patient-centered care, Process improvement, Quality improvement | No Comments
July 20, 2011
“The following document is a summary guide of infection prevention recommendations for outpatient (ambulatory care) settings. The recommendations included in this document are not new but rather reflect existing evidence-based guidelines produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. This summary guide is based primarily upon elements of Standard Precautions and represents the minimum infection prevention expectations for safe care in ambulatory care settings. Readers are urged to consult the full guidelines for additional background, rationale, and evidence behind each recommendation.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Evidence-based, Infection control, Outpatient care, Safety | No Comments
