Although William Heberden was one ofthe most distinguished clinicians ofhis day, no attempt has previously been made to bring together the available material, scattered in various published works and unpublished MSS, which could throw light on his London practice. I attempt in this article to find some answers to three groups of questions: first, what were the factors that Heberden had to weigh...

BACKGROUND Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) is a major cause of both healthcare and community acquired infections. In developing countries, manual phenotypic tests are the mainstay for the identification of staphylococci with the tube and slide coagulase tests being relied upon as confirmatory tests for S. aureus. The subjectivity associated with interpretation of these tests may result in misi...

R ECENT REVISIONS OF PREDOCTORAL AND POSTDOCTORAL training programs in medicine, and decreasing financial support for training programs in medical subspecialities, including hematology, have made it desirable to redefine the structure of subspecialties, including the numbers of subspecialists and their activities in academic institutions. How many hematologists now hold positions in academic in...

Many laboratories are taking a more focused approach to quality management system, i.e. the ISO 15189:2012 guideline (1). The Ethiopian standard agency (ESA) adopted ES ISO 15189:2013, in an effort to improve patient care through quality laboratory practices (2). In Ethiopia, a laboratory that meets this guideline can be accredited by Ethiopian national accreditation office (ENAO), indicating t...

The majority of recent studies conclude that children's private speech development (private speech internalization) is related to and important for mathematical development and disabilities. It is far from clear, however, whether private speech internalization itself plays any causal role in the development of mathematical competence. The main concerns of the present study were whether phonolog...

BACKGROUND Given the importance of primary care to healthcare systems and population health, it seems crucial to identify factors that contribute to the quality of primary care. Professional satisfaction has been linked with quality of primary care. Physician dissatisfaction is considered a risk factor for burnout and leaving medicine. OBJECTIVES This study explored factors associated with pr...

We present a novel experimental design to study social learning in the laboratory. Subjects have to predict the value of a good in a sequential order. We elicit each subject’s belief twice: ...rst (“prior belief”), after he observes his predecessors’ action; second (“posterior belief”), after he observes a private signal on the value of the good. We are therefore able to disentangle social lear...

We present unique audit-study evidence on health care quality in rural India, and find that most private providers lacked medical qualifications, but completed more checklist items than public providers and recommended correct treatments equally often. Among doctors with public and private practices, all quality metrics were higher in their private clinics. Market prices are positively correlat...

BACKGROUND Definitions of advanced nursing practice abound, yet little has been published concerning the context for advanced nursing in sub-Saharan Africa. This study set out to explore the existence of, and potential for, advanced nursing practice in Kenya. METHODS Ten nurses were invited to participate in semi-structured qualitative interviews. Participants were purposively selected to pro...

Rheumatologists generally use few quantitative measures in making clinical decisions. In the US, fewer than 10% use questionnaires in routine clinical care, and fewer than 15% perform a formal joint count at each visit. Patient questionnaires are the quantitative tools rheumatologists have to monitor their patients' health status and response to therapy. The health assessment questionnaire (HAQ...