BACKGROUND The organization of nursing services could be important to the quality of patient care and staff satisfaction. However, there is no universally accepted nomenclature for this organization. The objective of the current study was to classify general hospital wards based on data describing organizational practice reported by the ward nurse managers, and then to compare this classificati...

This retrospective, comparative survey examined patients who had a discharge diagnosis of chest pain and were admitted to The St. George Hospital between July 1999 to June 2000. The aim was to identify the clinical wards/units to which patients were admitted and the number of intra-ward transfers' patients experienced during their hospitalisation. Patients admitted to the cardiology ward/units ...

Critically ill patients, eligible for admission into intensive care units (ICUs), are often hospitalized in other wards due to a lack of ICU beds. Differences in morbidity between patients managed in ICUs and elsewhere are unknown, specifically the morbidity related to hospital-acquired infection. Patients fitting ICU admission criteria were identified by screening five entire hospitals on four...

The authors systematically studied the introduction of animal-assisted activity into a children's hospital in Italy. This pilot study examined the reactions of children, their parents and the hospital staff and the hospital-wide infection rate before and after the introduction of animals. The SAM (self-assessment manikin), three behavioral scales, analysis of children's graphic productions, a p...

A recent increase in the rate of tuberculosis among hospital personnel has led to a greater concern about the risk of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in the hospital. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the risk of tuberculosis infection among hospital personnel of a governmental hospital in Bangkok by applying hospital tuberculosis control strategies, including administrati...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between organisational cultures and the employee's resistance to change at five hospital wards in Western Sweden. Staff had experienced extensive change during a research project implementing person-centred care (PCC) for patients with chronic heart failure. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Surveys were sent out to 170 nurses. The surv...

BACKGROUND To evaluate hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in somatic (all admissions other than psychiatric) and psychiatric patients admitted to a tertiary university hospital in Oslo, before and after reorganization of the Norwegian healthcare system in 2002. METHODS Point prevalence studies were conducted four times per annum and over the period from 1995 to 2007. RESULTS A total of 57,...

On entering psychiatry from general hospital posts, I found that part of my work lay in the wards for feeble, elderly patients. I felt it might be of interest to study these patients, and to see if they had all been admitted as young psychotics and grown old in hospital, or whether they had been admitted as elderly people. Also I wondered how many of them really needed mental hospital care, and...

background and aims:nosocomial infections cause considerable morbidity and mortality and pose high financial burden on healthcare systems. although surface contact, surgical incisions, wounds and catheters are responsible for a high percentage of nosocomial infections, bacterial and fungal air contaminations in hospitals have an important role in development of hospital infections. the purpose ...