Medical care delivery

Fatigue and the delivery of medical care.

Lack of sleep has well established effects on physiological, cognitive and behavioural functionality. Sleep deprivation can adversely affect clinical performance as severely as alcohol according to some sources. Sleep deficiency may be due to loss of one night’s sleep or repeated interruptions of sleep. Chronic sleep degrades the ability to recognise one’s ability to recognise the impairmen...

Measuring the effectiveness of medical care delivery.

There are four stages to improving medical therapeutics: 1) the discovery of new therapies, 2) the application of such treatments to humans, 3) the demonstration of their therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials, and finally, 4) the application of efficacious therapies during routine medical practice. Relative to the other stages, this last important step is supported by relatively few resources...

Medical-process patents--monopolizing the delivery of health care.

Patents have helped promote innovation for centuries, but the modern application of patents to the field of medicine raises legal and ethical questions. Patents covering pharmaceutical products and medical research tools are ubiquitous, and many discoveries described by such patents have contributed to the advancement of medical science. At the same time, when patent protection has been too bro...

Medical professional liability and the delivery of obstetrical care.

Science of health care delivery milestones for undergraduate medical education

BACKGROUND The changing healthcare landscape requires physicians to develop new knowledge and skills such as high-value care, systems improvement, population health, and team-based care, which together may be referred to as the Science of Health Care Delivery (SHCD). To engender public trust and confidence, educators must be able to meaningfully assess physicians' abilities in SHCD. We aimed to...