While most industries have aggressively leveraged information technology (IT) to improve quality and reduce costs the healthcare sector has lagged behind. Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) hold great promise for improving quality of care yet widespread adoption is lacking. Physician acceptance is critical to widespread adoption of ambulatory EMRs, yet there is little independent research on phy...

As clinicians, physician leaders place great value on preserving their professional identity and autonomy (sec Box, p. 28, bottom). What they determine to be the best interests of the patient drives their decision making. Physician leaders, as administrators, on the other hand, serve as participative agents of the organization through active planning and the delegation of tasks. These two proto...

the changing demands on the health sectors in low- and middle-income countries especially sub-saharan african countries continue to challenge efforts to address critical shortages of the health workforce. addressing these challenges have led to the evolution of “non-physician clinicians” (npcs), that assume some physician roles and thus mitigate the continuing shortage of doctors in these count...

a decade ago, sub-saharan africa accounted for 24% of the global disease burden but was served by only 4% of the global health workforce. the chronic shortage of medical doctors has led other health professionals especially nurses to perform the role of healthcare providers. these health workers have been variously named clinical officers, health officers, physician assistants, nurse practition...

Physician assistants (PAs) have been used for decades in the Canadian military. Now, PAs are being introduced in various clinical settings to provide patient care for the general population. This article reviews major developments in the PA profession across Canada over the last decade. Nearly 541 PAs are employed in Canada or work for a Canadian agency. Growing evidence demonstrates the positi...

Background. Commonly self-reported questions in population health surveys, such as "do you have a family physician?", represent one of the best-known sources of information about patients' attachment to family physicians. Is it possible to find a proxy for this information in administrative data? Objective. To identify the type of patient attachment to a family physician using administrative da...

Most scarcities that underpin health disparities within and among countries are not natural; rather, they result from policy choices and the operation of social institutions. Using examples from the United States of America: the Chicago heat wave and hurricane Katrina, this paper develops "denaturalizing scarcity" as a strategy for enquiry to inform public-health ethics in an interconnected wor...

Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) eliminates illegible handwriting, reduces medical errors, and improves patient care. The administration, medical staff, nursing, and health information systems departments of a community teaching hospital cooperated to achieve organization-wide use of its CPOE system.