Improving management of inpatients with diabetes undergoing vascular surgery requires collaboration among many health care practitioners. This article describes a performance improvement project that implemented two evidence-based algorithmic order sets to guide perioperative glucose management for diabetic patients undergoing vascular procedures and utilized a certified diabetes educator (CDE)...

AIM This paper is a report of a study conducted to evaluate process and outcomes of care provided to patients with common complaints by general practitioners or specially trained nurse practitioners as first point of contact. BACKGROUND Studies in the United States of America and Great Britain show that substituting nurse practitioners for general practitioners results in higher patient satis...

The Council of Ontario University Programs in Nursing offers a nine-university, consortium-based primary health care nurse practitioner education program and on-line continuing education courses for primary health care nurse practitioners. Our study sought to determine the continuing education needs of primary health care nurse practitioners across Ontario, how best to meet these needs, and the...

In this paper, we examine the relationships between health care visits to general practitioners, public and private sector specialists using data from Italy, which has a mixed public-private health care system. We develop a simultaneous equations model that allows for the discreteness of measures of utilization and estimate this model using maximum simulated likelihood. Once common unobserved h...

BACKGROUND Chronic pain is a common problem affecting about half of the general population. This has implications for the utilization of both conventional and alternative health services. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine the use of conventional and alternative practitioners and medicines amongst individuals with chronic pain in the community. METHODS A total of 2422 individ...

This series responds to the many questions raised as conventional health care practitioners encounter widespread and increasing use of complementary and alternative therapies. Each publication in the series highlights one or more of the key issues facing health professionals today—including assessing information, safety, effectiveness, and the integration of conventional, complementary , and al...

In the UK, general practitioners are responsible for both providing primary care services and for organising referrals for specialist care. Consequently, the medical records held by general practitioners include details of all diagnoses and prescribed drugs, in many cases extending from birth. In an increasing number of general practices, these records are held in electronic format and are pote...

The Task force for Skin Care for All: Community Dermatology seeks to meet WHO objectives, to draw attention to the role of Traditional Health Practitioners and to develop integrated skin care. In many African countries patients will first use traditional medicine to treat skin diseases. Many traditional practices are beneficial but some are harmful. The Task Force recommends education of tradit...