BACKGROUND The Chinese term "Hot Qi" is often used by parents to describe symptoms in their children. The current study was carried out to estimate the prevalence of using the Chinese term "Hot Qi" to describe symptoms in children by their parents and the symptomatology of "Hot Qi". METHOD A cross sectional survey by face-to-face interview with a semi-structured questionnaire was carried out ...

BACKGROUND Over the last two decades, we have seen the successive rise and fall of a number of concepts, ideas or methods in healthcare quality improvement (QI). Paradoxically, the content of many of these QI methodologies is very similar, though their presentation often seeks to differentiate or distinguish them. METHODS This paper sets out to explore the processes by which new QI methodolog...

Introduction: Innovation is an essential component of quality improvement (QI) activities that aim to improve the provision of health care. These projects, however, engender ethical and regulatory issues around human subjects’ protections. A literature search was conducted to identify issues in the ethical conduct of QI. Findings from the literature search were used to develop questions for sem...

BACKGROUND Health systems worldwide are increasingly holding boards of healthcare organisations accountable for the quality of care that they provide. Previous empirical research has found associations between certain board practices and higher quality patient care; however, little is known about how boards govern for quality improvement (QI). METHODS We conducted fieldwork over a 30-month pe...

We show that, given any n and α, every embedding of any sufficiently large complete graph in R contains an oriented link with components Q1, . . . , Qn such that for every i 6= j, |lk(Qi, Qj)| ≥ α and |a2(Qi)| ≥ α, where a2(Qi) denotes the second coefficient of the Conway polynomial of Qi.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this multicentre randomised controlled trial was to investigate the contribution of de qi to the immediate analgesic effect of acupuncture in patients with primary dysmenorrhoea and the specific traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis cold and dampness stagnation. METHOD Eighty-eight patients with primary dysmenorrhoea and cold and dampness stagnation were randomly assigne...

Academic departments of internal medicine have traditionally focused on their mission to provide clinical services, educate the next generation, and conduct research. As requirements to engage in formal quality improvement and patient safety (QI/PS) activities increase, academic departments provide an important setting to design, implement, and critically evaluate care delivery systems, as well...

The qi stagnation constitution is associated with depression in traditional Chinese medicine. It is unclear how rumination and stressful life events affect the relationship between the qi stagnation constitution and depression. The Qi Stagnation Constitution Scale, Ruminative Response Scale, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and Adolescent Self-Rating Life Events Checklist were...

"Qi", the Chinese character for air, is a Chinese/Oriental term for an abstract form of energy that is considered vital to the mind and the body. Traditionally, Qi circulated through channels of the body known as "Meridians", is referred to as "Internal Qi". Proper flow of internal Qi is deemed to be important for good health, while blockage of Qi is associated with disease and dysfunction. Whe...

BACKGROUND The evidence base for quality improvement (QI) interventions is expanding rapidly. The diversity of the initiatives and the inconsistency in labeling these as QI interventions makes it challenging for researchers, policymakers, and QI practitioners to access the literature systematically and to identify relevant publications. METHODS We evaluated search strategies developed for MED...