Ethics committees are the primary mechanism for dealing with ethical issues in hospitals in the United States today [1-3]. Present in nearly every US hospital, ethics committees were virtually nonexistent in the 1960s and ’70s and, as recently as the early 1980s, were present in only 1 percent of US hospitals [4]. By the late 1980s, however, ethics committee presence had expanded to over 60 per...

OBJECTIVE To determine the thoroughness of terminal disinfection and cleaning of patient rooms in hospital intensive care units and to assess the value of a structured intervention program to improve the quality of cleaning as a means of reducing environmental transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms within the intensive care unit. DESIGN Prospective, multicenter, and pre- and postinterv...

Results 56 of the 89 eligible centers participated (67% of shortterm hospital beds), 64 % of those beds were in teaching hospitals. Of the 7709 episodes of HA-BSIs, 874 (11 %) were secondary to a SSI. Gastrointestinal surgeries were, by far, the leading cause of BSIs (244 – 28%) followed by cardiac surgery (132 – 15%), and orthopaedic surgery (98 – 11%). Implants were present in 25 cases (19%)....

background: the aim of this study was assessment the risk management status of waste anesthetic gases in academicals hospitals in iran to prevent from harmful effects of these gases on employees' health. methods: a descriptive-analytic study was designed in 2011. standard structured checklist developed by ecri institute (emergency care research institute) was applied. checklists were filled ons...

background: understanding customers has become an urgent topic for increasing competitiveness. the purpopse of  the study was to develop a qualitative dynamic attribute value model which provides insight into the customers' value for healthcare institute managers by conducting the initial open-ended questionnaire survey to select participants purposefully. methods: a total number of 427 questio...

AIM To clarify the current state of practice for colonic diverticular bleeding (CDB) in Japan. METHODS We conducted multicenter questionnaire surveys of the practice for CDB including clinical settings (8 questions), diagnoses (8 questions), treatments (7 questions), and outcomes (4 questions) in 37 hospitals across Japan. The answers were compared between hospitals with high and low number o...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Nursing knowledge and skills are required to sustain quality of care and patient safety. The numbers of nurses with Bachelor degrees in Malaysia are very limited. This study aims to predict the impact of nurse level of education on quality of care and patient safety in the medical and surgical wards in Malaysian private hospitals. METHODOLOGY A cross-sectional survey ...

Intensive care units (ICUs) have become an increasingly important part of the American health care delivery system. In 2000, critical care cost $55.5 billion—13.3 percent of total hospital costs and half a percent of the United States’ gross domestic product. As the population continues to age and the severity of hospital cases continues to increase, the role of the intensive care in hospital e...

BACKGROUND The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the inequality of geographical distribution of non-cardiac intensive care beds in Iran using the Gini coefficient. METHODS The population information of Iran's provinces in 2006 was obtained from The Statistical Center of Iran and the number of non-cardiac intensive care beds (including ICU, PostICU and NICU beds) in all provinces wa...

BACKGROUND The United States has a high proportion of people without health insurance (15%) and a low proportion of people without employment (5%), resulting in millions who lack insurance but have some ability to pay. We tested whether hospitals charge similar prices for well-specified elective services to individuals paying out-of-pocket for medical care. METHODS We surveyed the 2 largest g...