The WHO assists Member States in reducing dissemination of health care associated infections. Photo credit: WHOHealth care-associated infections (HAIs) are considered the most frequent adverse events that threaten patient safety around the world. Around 5% to 15% of patients admitted to acute care hospitals in developed countries acquire HAIs at any given time. The risk of acquiring infection i...

The purpose of hand hygiene is to break the chain of healthcare-associated infection. In many countries hand hygiene is regularly audited as part of quality assurance based on recommendations from the World Health Organization. Direct observation is the recommended audit method but is associated with disadvantages, including potential for being observed to alter usual behaviour. The Hawthorne e...

Introduction / objectives Healthcare workers (HCWs) hands play a crucial role in the transmission of micro organisms. Therefore, hand hygiene is acknowledged as the single most effective measure to prevent healthcare-associated infection. However many factors are interplaying making this simple, most effective preventive action not easy to be achieved, some are related to tools and others are i...

BACKGROUND Lean healthcare is claimed to contribute to improved patient satisfaction, but there is limited evidence to support this notion. This study investigates how primary-care centres working with Lean define and improve value from the patient's perspective, and how the application of Lean healthcare influences patient satisfaction. METHODS This paper contains two qualitative case studie...

BACKGROUND The new round of Healthcare Reform in China has implemented over 3 years since 2009, and promoted greatly the development of public county hospitals. The purpose of this study is to evaluate county hospitals efficiency before and after the healthcare reform, and further assess the reform effectiveness through the comparative analysis of the efficiency. METHODS Data envelopment anal...

This paper presents a multi-channel approach to strengthen the provision of healthcare services in Southern African regions with the help of European technology providers as well as hospitals. On the one side, the paper focuses on the transfer of European medical technologies and of the related services within African developing regions. On the other side, the research concentrates on an approa...

The growing public concern about the ethical conduct of healthcare professionals highlights the need to incorporate clinical ethics in medical education. This study examined the knowledge and practice of clinical ethics among healthcare providers in a government hospital in Chennai. A sample of 51 treating physicians and 58 other non-physician service providers from the hospital answered a self...

Healthcare disparities are a growing concern for the U.S. healthcare system. These disparities are found at all levels of quality, access, and cost and greatly affect those segments of the population that most need affordable, quality, and accessible healthcare. The populations most in need are rural, ethnic, racial, and minority populations, who do not usually receive the highest quality of ca...

BACKGROUND Quality and patient safety (PS) are critical components of medical education. This study reports on the self-reported PS competence of medical students and postgraduate trainees. METHODS The Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey was administered to medical students and postgraduate trainees in January 2012. PS dimension scores were compared across learning settings...

Attention to healthcare-associated infections has increased, in part due to legislative mandates for monitoring infections and federal payment policies. Current systems, which rely on considerable human involvement in finding and interpreting whether clinical events represent infection, can lead to biased institutional rankings. Relying on individuals employed by reporting institutions in an en...