"This handbook delivers the assistance you need to provide timely and effective, evidence-based consultations for a range of commonly encountered clinical situations. This book will help you: navigate the most common clinical scenarios requiring medical consultation by reviewing 20-25 clinical questions for each patient type; locate evidence-based answers for each question, collected from the latest clinical findings; and find the information you need quickly thanks to a user-friendly format."--Résumé de l'éditeur.
This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.
In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.
Every day we make decisions about our health - some big and some small. What we eat, how we live and even where we live can affect our health. But how can we be sure that the advice we are given about these important matters is right for us? This book will provide you with the right tools for assessing health advice.
Provides a comprehensive evidence-based guide to the management of the growing population of patients who require perioperative care Perioperative Medicine: Medical Consultation and Co-Management is the first comprehensive reference text developed specifically for hospitalists but envisioned also to help internists, anesthesiologists, allied health professionals, fellows, residents, and medical students manage various aspects of the medical care of the surgical patient. The book features both the preoperative and postoperative medical management of the surgical patient. It focuses on systems, operations, quality of perioperative care, and preoperative assessment of the patient, all in consideration with system-specific risk and evidence-based strategies that minimize risk. It places special emphasis on care of the older hospitalized surgical patient and offers a thorough discussion of post-operative conditions and their management. Chapters cover vital topics such as: Hospitalist as a Medical Consultant Co-Management of the Surgical Patient Preoperative Evaluation Improving the Quality and Outcomes of Perioperative Care Developing, Implementing, and Operating a Preoperative Clinic Assessing and Managing Risk of Major Organ Systems Assessing and Managing Disorders for Surgery Postoperative Care and Co-Management by Surgery Type Managing Common Postoperative Conditions With the core responsibilities of perioperative care falling more and more on the shoulders of hospitalists, internists, and allied health professionals, Perioperative Medicine is a much-needed guide for managing the clinical and operational issues associated with caring for hospitalized surgical patients.
The successful implementation of evidence into practice is dependent on aligning the available evidence to the particular context through the active ingredient of facilitation. Designed to support the widely recognised PARIHS framework, which works as a guide to plan, action and evaluate the implementation of evidence into practice, this book provides a very practical ‘how-to’ guide for facilitating the whole process. This text discusses: undertaking an initial diagnosis of the context and reaching a consensus on the evidence to be implemented; how to link the research evidence with clinical and patients’ experience and local information in the form of audit data or patient and staff feedback; the range of diagnostic, consensus building and stakeholder consultation methods that can be helpful; a description of facilitator roles and facilitation methods, tools and techniques; some of theories that underpin the PARIHS framework and how these have been integrated to inform a revised version of PARIHS Including internationally-sourced case study examples to illustrate how the facilitation role and facilitation skills have been applied in a range of different health care settings, this is the ideal text for those interested in leading or facilitating evidence based implementation projects, from the planning stage through to evaluation.
This book provides both the evidence and the guidance to enable doctors to improve their assessment and management of the psychological and behavioural aspects of the most common problems presenting in general medical care. It summarises the recent research evidence and provides common sense guidance on how psychological and psychiatric aspects of illness can be addressed within the medical consultation.
Telemedicineâ€"the use of information and telecommunications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participantsâ€"is receiving increasing attention not only in remote areas where health care access is troublesome but also in urban and suburban locations. Yet the benefits and costs of this blend of medicine and digital technologies must be better demonstrated before today's cautious decision-makers invest significant funds in its development. Telemedicine presents a framework for evaluating patient care applications of telemedicine. The book identifies managerial, technical, policy, legal, and human factors that must be taken into account in evaluating a telemedicine program. The committee reviews previous efforts to establish evaluation frameworks and reports on results from several completed studies of image transmission, consulting from remote locations, and other telemedicine programs. The committee also examines basic elements of an evaluation and considers relevant issues of quality, accessibility, and cost of health care. Telemedicine will be of immediate interest to anyone with interest in the clinical application of telemedicine.
This book provides an important contribution to the new and growing field of ‘narrative-based medicine’. It specifically addresses the largest area of medical activity, primary care. It provides both a theoretical framework and practical skills for dealing with individual consultations, family work, clinical supervision and teamwork, and offers a comprehensive approach to the whole range of work in primary care. Using a wide range of clinical examples, it shows how professionals in primary care can help clarify patients’ existing stories, and elucidate new stories. It can be used as a training resource and includes exercises and summaries of key points to consider. It is based on, and describes, an established evaluated training method, and is of immediate and significant practical use to readers. It is essential reading for general practitioners, practice nurses and others in the primary care team, psychologists, family therapists, counsellors and other professionals attached to primary care. GP trainers, tutors and course organisers will find it a valuable educational tool. Professionals elsewhere in primary care such as pharmacists, dentists and optometrists, and academics in medical sociology and medical anthropology will also find it very useful.
"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/
