Much of the empirical data available about therapeutic alliance and its relationship to termination status come from individual psychotherapies. We know less about therapeutic alliance in couple therapy. A unique characteristic of alliance in couple or family therapy is the possibility of discrepancies in alliance between system members. In this study we sought to demonstrate three statistical ...

Ecological networks are a useful tool to study the complexity of biotic interactions at a community level. Advances in the understanding of network patterns encourage the application of a network approach in other disciplines than theoretical ecology, such as biodiversity conservation. So far, however, practical applications have been meagre. Here we present a framework for network analysis to ...

Given that women in rural communities in developing countries are responsible for the nutrition and health-related decisions affecting children in their care, their empowerment may influence the health status of their children. The association between women's empowerment, measured by using a recently developed Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and children's health status is examined fo...

BACKGROUND Frail older people admitted to acute care hospitals are at risk of a range of adverse outcomes, including geriatric syndromes, although targeted care strategies can improve health outcomes for these patients. It is therefore important to assess inter-hospital variation in performance in order to plan and resource improvement programs. Clinical quality outcome indicators provide a mec...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality patient safety indicators track adverse safety events in hospitalized patients but overlook safety incidents specific to CKD. This study considers candidate CKD-pertinent patient safety indicators and compares them with the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality patient safety indicators. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANT...

A sensation was created throughout the world when Institute of Medicine (IOM) attributed up to 98000 deaths due to preventable medical errors in United States.1 Methodology of this report was challenged but the magnitude of the problem was highlighted again when a conservative estimate by Institute of Medicine and Healthgrades showed that 400,000-1.2 million errorinduced deaths had taken place ...

Colonoscopy is widely used for the diagnosis and treatment of colon disorders. Properly performed, colonoscopy is generally safe, accurate, and well-tolerated. Visualization of the mucosa of the entire large intestine and distal terminal ileum usually is possible during colonoscopy. Polyps can be removed during colonoscopy, thereby reducing the risk of colon cancer. Colono scopy is the preferre...

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is a chronic, debilitating, and expensive condition affecting millions of people globally. There is significant variation in the quality of care for patients with IBD across North America, Europe, and Asia; this variation suggests poor quality of care due to overuse, underuse, or misuse of health services a...

All the review papers and the short communications presented in this session are in this EAAP publication entitled “Indicators of milk and beef quality”. Additional papers from invited authors were written in 2004 and then added to complete the publication although not all topics related to quality indicators are covered in the present publication. Review papers aim to describe the state of the...