CONTEXT Incident-reporting systems (IRSs) are used to gather information about patient safety incidents. Despite the financial burden they imply, however,little is known about their effectiveness. This article systematically reviews the effectiveness of IRSs as a method of improving patient safety through organizational learning. METHODS Our systematic literature review identified 2 groups of...

OBJECTIVE To describe complaints by patients and compare rates of complaint in demographic subgroups of patients and hospital departments. DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective analysis of complaints made by patients attending 67 hospitals (metropolitan, 25; rural, 42) in Victoria, and lodged with the Victorian Health Complaint Information Program (January 1997 - December 2001). MAIN OUTCOME MEA...

Aim: To document 1) that patient safety culture scores vary not only by individual responder, but also, and to a large degree, by ward and department, and 2) that more of the variation is across wards than across departments. Setting: 500-bed Norwegian university hospital September-December 2006. Methods: Data collected from 1400 staff by (the Norwegian version of) the generic version of the Sa...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to describe current physician scheduling and concomitant opportunities for improvement in public hospital departments in Sweden. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH A total of 13 departments spread geographically across Sweden covering seven different specialties participated in the study. Data were collected through interviews with individuals involved in creatin...

Aim. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact, among nurses in hospital settings, of a questionnaire-based implementation intentions intervention on notification of potential ocular tissue donors to donation stakeholders. Methods. This randomized intervention was clustered at the level of hospital departments with two study arms: questionnaire-based implementation intentions interven...

Described in an analysis of the cost to the Ministry of Health of providing district health services in Malawi, with particular emphasis on the district hospital. District resource allocation patterns were assessed by carefully disaggregating district costs by level of care and hospital department. A strikingly low proportion of district recurrent costs was absorbed by salaries and wages (27-39...

INTRODUCTION Patients with prostate cancer (PC) have so far been followed in specialised hospital departments after diagnosis and initiation of treatment. The main obstacles associated with the transfer of this activity to general practice include lack of experience and uncertainty as to whether general practitioners (GPs) can handle follow-up. MATERIAL AND METHODS A Steering Committee was es...

The present study assesses barriers to identification and referral of domestic violence (DV) victims by staff at a health care institution following a 3-hr DV training program in which 752 health care providers participated. Focus groups are conducted with staff in hospital departments that serve a high volume of women. Responses to focus group questions identify system-wide and individual hosp...

The aim of this study is to explore the application of Boston matrix combined with SWOT analysis on operational development and evaluations of hospital departments. We selected 73 clinical and medical technology departments of our hospital from 2011 to 2013, and evaluated our hospital by Boston matrix combined with SWOT analysis according to the volume of services, medical quality, work efficie...

BACKGROUND The basic administrative structures at most academic institutions were implemented more than 50 years ago and have remained largely unchanged. Since the surgical specialties were in nascent stages during that time, they were clubbed together within the department of surgery. There has been extensive growth in the breadth and depth of plastic surgery over the past few decades and curr...