Where We Are and How We Got Here In the autumn of 2012, the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine became the first medical school in the nation to amend its admissions policy to welcome applications from “DREAMers”—undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, i.e., prior to the age of 16, and have been raised and educated in the United States for mor...

The authors analyze the challenges to using academic measures (MCAT scores and GPAs) as thresholds for admissions and, for applicants exceeding the threshold, using personal qualities for admission decisions; review the literature on using the medical school interview and other admission data to assess personal qualities of applicants; identify challenges of developing better methods of assessi...

Background: Unnecessary patient admission to a hospital refers to the hospitalization of a patient without clinical indications and criteria. Various factors related to the patient (e.g., age, disease severity, payment method, and admission route and time), the physician and the hospital and its facilities and diagnostic technologies affect a patient unnecessary admission in a hospital. Unneces...

BACKGROUND Previous studies of adverse drug events (ADE) as a cause of hospital admission in the elderly have often been limited in their ability to assess fully the impact and potential for prevention because they either did not include all categories of ADE and/or did not assess severity and preventability. AIMS To assess the frequency, severity and preventability of ADE causing emergency m...

INTRODUCTION Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) as an add-on modality to medical treatment has been recommended in national guidelines for patients acutely admitted with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) exacerbation and hypercapnic respiratory failure. To address concerns regarding whether NIV is used appropriately, we conducted an audit of COPD patients admitted to a university hospit...