An essential mode of contact between general practitioners (GPs) and hospital staff is the referral letter. This must be clear and concise with sufficient information to aid the GP, the consultant and the patient. In order to ensure this, a proposal was made for the use of a structured or standardized referral letter: a form letter. This report shows that form letters were shorter than typed le...

several thousand sets of quotation marks, parentheses, and italics. Hardly a page in the book does not have at least a dozen words in quotations unnecessarily. Despite these objections there is much useful information in the book, which would be well for physicians to know. The book is at its best when it discusses sex education of the child and parental attitudes toward children. It is at its ...

Introduction: Simulation is a version of some real tools or work situations that tries to exhibit some behavioral features of an abstract or physical system through behavior of another system. The main purpose of application of simulation in health care is preparing students to confront with clinical situations which can increase patients’ safety, decrease errors and refine nurses’ clinical jud...

If continuity of care is to be preserved, then the process by which a patient is referred to hospital is important. We have analysed a series of letters of referral from general practitioners with special reference to the diagnoses made and the inclusion of a relevant history.

Over the last three years, the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University, together with Jackson State University and a number of other academic and DoD partners have conducted a pilot project in distance education, using networkbased TANGO Interactive collaboration tool to deliver semester-long academic credit courses in a synchronous (real-time) fashion. This report summar...

Objectives: This pilot study explores the perceptions of medical students and their individual mentors who advised them in a specialised programme where students gained insight into non-tradition career paths. Methods: Twelve medical students in years 3-6 at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden were recruited to the Prominentia mentor programme where they were individually paired with mentors who met ...

Statistics is an essential tool in medicine in general and in medical research in particular. This is shown by the large number of articles on statistical topics carried by medical journals, by the demand for consultancy from medical statisticians and by the number of textbooks in medical statistics, especially introductory texts, now on the market. Yet, despite this importance and wealth of ad...

To determine the extent of non-attendance at first hospital appointments 269 hospital referrals made in one practice over 14 weeks were analysed retrospectively. Non-attendance was more likely among patients referred to outpatient departments than to casualty or for admission. Fifteen per cent (41/269) of all patients and 20% (33/167) of outpatients failed to keep their initial appointments. Pr...

OBJECTIVE To canvass the views of all general practitioners and consultants working in Newcastle upon Tyne on the content of referral letters and replies, the feasibility of standardising certain aspects of referral letters, and the use of communications data for audit purposes. DESIGN A postal questionnaire was sent to all general practitioners and consultants in Newcastle upon Tyne in May 1...