BACKGROUND Health care policy-makers look for prescribing indicators at the population level to evaluate the performance of prescribers, improve quality and control drug costs. The aim of this research was to; (i) estimate the level of variation in potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) across prescribers in the national Irish older population using the STOPP criteria; (ii) estimate how re...

A problem with the location-free nature of cell phones is that callers have difficulty predicting receivers' states, leading to inappropriate calls. One promising solution involves helping callers decide when to interrupt by providing them contextual information about receivers. We tested the effectiveness of different kinds of contextual information by measuring the degree of agreement between...

This study explored women's experiences of their responses from health professionals following disclosure of domestic violence within a health setting. The existence of health-based policies guiding professionals in the provision of appropriate support following disclosure of domestic violence is only effective if health professionals understand the dynamics of violent relationships. This artic...

The number needed to treat can be calculated for ventilator-associated pneumonia reduction strategies such as subglottic secretion drainage technology based on previous work establishing its relative risk reduction. Assuming an incidence of 4%, employing subglottic secretion drainage in 33 patients will prevent one case of ventilator-associated pneumonia, and thus potentially 4 cases annually i...

Stress in broilers may have severe consequences on the final product quality. A synthetic analogue of uropygial secretion of mother hens was isolated from poultry. This mother hen uropygial secretion analogue (MHUSA) was tested in farm conditions on broilers during 12 wk. The purpose of this trial was to estimate the influence of MHUSA on growing performances, meat characteristics after process...

We assessed the effectiveness of using objects of obsession as token reinforcers to increase task performance for children with autism. The use of obsessions as tokens (e.g., letter "A", a picture of a train) was compared with the use of typical tokens (e.g., stars, happy faces). A multiple baseline design across children with a reversal within child was used. Data were collected on percentage ...

AIMS Little is known about the impact of inappropriate prescribing (IP) in community-dwelling adults, aged 80 years and older. The prevalence at baseline (November 2008September 2009) and impact of IP (misuse and underuse) after 18 months on mortality and hospitalization in a cohort of community-dwelling adults, aged 80 years and older (n = 503) was studied. METHODS Screening Tool of Older Pe...

Effects of Behavioral Interventions on Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing in Primary Care 12Months After Stopping Interventions Inappropriate antibiotic prescribing contributes to antibiotic resistance and leads to adverse events.1 A clusterrandomized trial of 3 behavioral interventions2 intended to reduce inappropriate prescribing found that 2 of the 3 interventions were effective.3 This stu...

All analyses involve simplification, frequently through aggregation. As has been seen in debate on "Closing the Gaps", aggregation that groups by ethnicity can be challenged. This paper briefly considers some of the theoretical issues surrounding aggregation, asking under what conditions aggregations might be acceptable. It then looks at possible distortions that can arise from inappropriate ag...

Hyponatremia is a clinically relevant disorder. Ten to twenty per cent of patients in hospitals are affected by it. Hyponatremia is found to occur in almost every clinical department. Recently, vasopressin antagonists have been licensed to treat hyponatremia of the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH). They provide physicians with the first specific and effective the...