Occupational violence is a worldwide, multifaceted problem affecting all industries, including healthcare. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of the experiences of 158 allied health professionals, 135 doctors, and 1229 nurses working in a rural area in eastern Australia. Response rates were 72 percent for allied health professionals and 62 percent for general practitioners (GPs) and nurses. ...

BACKGROUND In many countries, the referral-consultation process faces a number of challenges from inefficiencies and rising demand, resulting in excessive wait times for many specialties. We collected referral data from a sample of family doctors across the province of Ontario, Canada as part of a larger program of research. The purpose of this study is to describe referral patterns from primar...

Boroughs recently spent an intensive weekend in two study conferences concerned with mental health problems in their areas: one run by the NAMH and the other by the London Boroughs Committee. Since April 1st of this year, these authorities have been responsible for running education, health, children's and welfare services previously administered by county and county borough councils. The NAMH'...

Background While evidence-based practice is a familiar concept to allied health clinicians, knowledge translation (KT) is less well known and understood. The need for a framework that enables allied health clinicians to access and engage with KT was identified. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the Translating Allied Health Knowledge (TAHK) Framework.   M...

The aim of this study is to describe average out-of-pocket costs across different regions of Australia, as defined by Primary Health Network (PHN) boundaries, and assess the association between population characteristics and out-of-pocket costs for selected primary care services. A combination of descriptive and regression analysis was undertaken using administrative data from the Australian De...

This special issue of Australian Health Review features original research articles, reviews and perspectives dedicated to the theme strengthening the allied health workforce. Of the total healthworkforce,more than 126 000 are registered allied health practitioners in Australia. With the growing demands upon the health system from patients with complex and chronic conditions, there is a resurgen...

BACKGROUND Increased in-hospital mortality associated with weekend admission has been reported for many acute conditions, but no study has investigated "weekend effect" for acute kidney injury requiring dialysis (AKI-D). METHODS In this large, propensity score matched cohort of AKI-D, we examined the impact of weekend admission and in-centre nephrology services in 53,170 AKI-D admissions betw...

It is now 15 years since Bell and Redelmeier published their landmark study demonstrating higher mortality for people admitted to hospital during weekends compared with during the week. Examining the records of 3.8 million patients admitted over a 10-year period to emergency departments in Ontario, Canada, this ‘weekend effect’ existed over a range of acute conditions, including 23 out of the 1...