CONTEXT Longitudinal integrated clerkships (LICs) represent a model of the structural redesign of clinical education that is growing in the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa. By contrast with time-limited traditional block rotations, medical students in LICs provide comprehensive care of patients and populations in continuing learning relationships over time and across disciplines and ven...

OBJECTIVES To explore the public's awareness of cancer symptoms and the barriers to seeking medical help among Omani adults attending primary care settings in Muscat governorate, the capital city of Oman. METHODS The Cancer Awareness Measure (CAM) questionnaire (translated into Arabic) was used to collect data from a total of 12 randomly selected local health centers (LHCs) in Muscat governor...

Food-related infection is an important health problem in many countries. This study was designed as an interventional study and carried out between December 1999 and August 2000. All 83 staff, handling food at the kitchens, were included in the study. A questionnaire was developed to evaluate the level of information and self-reported behaviours of the participants before and after the training...

BACKGROUND Consumer use of herbal and natural products (H/NP) is increasing, yet physicians are often unprepared to provide guidance due to lack of educational training. This knowledge deficit may place consumers at risk of clinical complications. We wished to evaluate the impact that a natural medicine clinical decision tool has on faculty attitudes, practice experiences, and needs with respec...

Junior doctors are commonly asked to prescribe simple medications for symptom relief for patients out of hours. Unfortunately, time constraints and other pressures may lead to delays before the medications are prescribed. A quality improvement project was conducted at a large university teaching hospital to establish the extent of the problem, with the aim of finding measures to improve preempt...

CONTEXT Regional Australia is critically short of registered nurses (RNs) due to an ageing nursing workforce and difficulty in attracting new staff. It is recognised that rural background is the most influential factor shaping a health professional's decision to practise in regional areas. Because of this, Charles Sturt University (CSU), with campuses throughout regional New South Wales (NSW), ...

As part of the National Clinical Programme on healthcare-associated infection prevention, a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) working group developed a quality improvement tool for prevention of surgical site infection (SS). We aimed to validate the effectiveness of an educational campaign, which utilises this quality improvement tool ...

Previous studies in USA and Canada have found that physicians and physicians in training have a limited understanding of medical care costs. In this study, we set out to survey all grades of doctors in the surgical department, emergency department, and anaesthetic department in a university-affiliated, Irish teaching hospital. Open-ended questionnaires on cost of 25 routinely used items in the ...

BACKGROUND Drug use evaluation is a performance improvement method that evaluates medication-use processes. Medication studies are especially important for drugs with narrow therapeutic index, specific indication, high costs as well as for drugs with widespread use. Intravenous pantoprazole always ranked among the top 5 costly drugs in Amir-al-Momenin Hospital. Considering the fact that widespr...