BACKGROUND Variability in the demand for any service is a significant barrier to efficient distribution of limited resources. In health care, demand is often highly variable and access may be limited when peaks cannot be accommodated in a downsized care delivery system. Intensive care units may frequently present bottlenecks to patient flow, and saturation of these services limits a hospital's ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework for improving intensive care unit performance. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH The study introduces a quality management framework by combining cause and effect diagram and logical framework. An intensive care unit was identified for the study on the basis of its performance. The reasons for not achieving the desired perfor...

abstract ba ckground: high level of stress in intensive care unit nurses affects the quality of their nursing care. therefore, this study aimed to determine the effects of a stress management program on the quality of nursing care of intensive care unit nurses. materials and methods: this study is a randomized clinical trial that was conducted on 65 nurses. the samples were selected by stratifi...

background & aim: prenatal care is a key strategy for achieving public health goals, primary healthcare objectives, and the millennium development goals. the aim of this study was to investigate the factors influencing the use of prenatal care services in order to design suitable interventions and promote the use of these services. methods:in this systematic quantitative literature review, stud...

results the five determinants of cost, inconvenience, fear, organization, and patient-dentist relationship were determined as barriers to access to dental services among which the cost and patient-dentist relationship were identified as the first and last priorities with the coordinates (1.4 and 1.4) and (1.25 and -0.65), respectively. conclusions high cost of dental care has led to not referri...

Intensive care support of patients with severe respiratory failure has improved over recent years and with improved methods of ventilation fewer of these patients now die. However despite these improvements, a significant number of patients still die with acute respiratory failure. The outbreak of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza presented NSW intensive care units with many critically ill patient...

THE SUCCESS OF INTENSIVE CARE, which is designed to mitigate life-threatening critical illness, traditionallyhasbeengaugedby the proportion of patients alive at hospital discharge or at day 28. With technological advances, many patients now survive what were previously fatal critical illnesses, in turngeneratinganenlarging population of intensive care unit (ICU) survivors. There are increasing ...

BACKGROUND Over the last 20 years, multiple interventions to better integrate palliative care and intensive care unit (ICU) care have been evaluated. This systematic review summarizes these studies and their outcomes. METHODS We searched MEDLINE, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), the Cochrane Library, and the Web of Science; performed a search of artic...

b a ckground: malnutrition has been the most prevalent problem in hospitalized patients during recent years, which accentuate the paramount importance of comprehensive nutritional  support  among  these  patients.  this  study  aimed  to provide a review of the recent literature about intensive care unit (icu) inpatients and their nutritional care. m ethods : this review on energy and nutrient ...