BACKGROUND Parents and carers of children with eczema often underuse emollient therapy, essential to repairing and protecting the defective skin barrier in atopic eczema. Educational interventions delivered by specialist dermatology nurses in hospital settings have been shown to improve emollient use and reduce symptoms of atopic eczema, but benefits of community-based interventions are uncerta...

background: stress and anxiety in cancer patients are caused by disease diagnosis, unfamiliar experiences, and therapy-related problems. in addition to the short duration of radiotherapy, receiving and understanding of the information about this treatment could be difficult for patients due to anxiety, fatigue, and mental pressure. training of cancer patients about radiotherapy via educational ...

BACKGROUND The promotion of care pathways in the recent Governmental health policy reports of Lord Darzi is likely to increase efforts to promote the use of care pathways in the NHS. Evidence on the process of pathway implementation, however, is sparse and variations in how organisations go about the implementation process are likely to be large. This paper summarises what is known about factor...

BACKGROUND Most studies of interventions to reduce laboratory test utilization have occurred in academic hospital settings, used historical controls, or have had short post intervention follow-up. Interventions with the greatest impact use multiple approaches, are repeated regularly, include comparisons with physician peers, and have a personal approach. We determined whether laboratory test ut...

BACKGROUND Depression and diabetes cause significant burden for patients and the healthcare system and, when co-occurring, result in poorer self-care behaviors and worse glycemic control than for either condition alone. However, the clinical management of these comorbid conditions is complicated by a host of patient, provider, and system-level barriers that are especially problematic for patien...

BACKGROUND Quality Improvement Interventions require significant financial investments, and therefore demand careful consideration in their design in order to maximize potential benefits. In this correspondence we present the methodological approach of a multifaceted quality improvement intervention aiming to improve quality of care in primary care, properly tailored for a country such as Cypru...

BACKGROUND The transfer of research knowledge into clinical practice can be a continuous challenge for researchers. Information and communication technologies, such as websites and email, have emerged as popular tools for the dissemination of evidence to health professionals. OBJECTIVE The objective of this systematic review was to identify research on health professionals' perceived usabilit...

Researchers have identified four common co-occurring parental risk factors-substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, and child conduct problems-that lead to child maltreatment. The extent to which maltreatment prevention programs must directly address these risk factors to improve responsiveness to parenting programs or can directly focus on improving parenting skills, says Richard Ba...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact and sustainability of a multifaceted intervention to prevent methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) transmission implemented in 3 chronologically overlapping phases at 1 hospital. DESIGN Interrupted time-series analyses. SETTING A Veterans Affairs hospital in the northeastern United States. PATIENTS AND PARTICIPANTS Individuals admitted to acute ...

BACKGROUND Patients on general hospital wards who deteriorate clinically are often not recognised as needing an escalation in care, and effective interventions are delayed. This study reviews a multifaceted approach to the identification and management of these patients in a large metropolitan hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE Four interventions were combined into the P...