BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Two million elderly Americans are abused or neglected each year. Elderly patients visit their physicians approximately five times each year. Yet physicians initiate only about 2% of the reported cases of abuse and neglect. This study's purpose was to assess the experience, knowledge, and attitudes of primary care physicians toward elder mistreatment. METHODS A self-r...

Falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries among older adults. The American and British Geriatric Societies recommend a fall risk assessment to identify risk factors and guide interventions to prevent these falls. This study describes the self-reported discussion of fall prevention approaches used by primary care providers (PCPs)-family practitioners, internists and nurse pract...

OBJECTIVE To describe the frequency of support for terminal sedation among internists, determine whether support for terminal sedation is accompanied by support for physician assisted suicide (PAS), and explore characteristics of internists who support terminal sedation but not assisted suicide. DESIGN A statewide, anonymous postal survey. SETTING Connecticut, USA. PARTICIPANTS 677 Connec...

Aims: The Supporting Hypertension Awareness and Research Europe-wide (SHARE) survey aimed to qualify the key challenges that physicians face when trying to get patients to recommended blood pressure (BP) goals. Methods and results: The survey was open to physicians involved in the treatment of hypertension, was anonymous, and included 45 questions covering: physicians’ demographic information, ...

BACKGROUND The selection and the professional training for a resident in internal medicine requires a great investment of time, training effort and money. Drop-outs are therefore considered a failure of the selection procedure. To evaluate our selection model and outcome of the training programme, we determined the drop-out rate at the Leiden University Medical Centre with its affiliated hospit...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE High morbidity of CVC-related infections has led to national guidelines for their prevention. Despite recommendations for the use of maximal barrier precautions (mask, sterile gloves, gown, and large drape) and skin antisepsis with 2% chlorhexidine gluconate during CVC insertion, internists in the United States are not implementing these practices frequently. This study...

Dermatology is a specific branch of medicine which includes dermatologic manifestations of systemic underlying diseases as well as primary cutaneous diseases. In this study, specialists' abilities of defining and diagnosing dermatologic diseases were assessed. 381 hospitalized patients who were referred to the Dermatology Clinic were reviewed via electronic medical charts. 121 of the clinicians...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Communication between physicians caring for hospitalized patients and those patients' primary care providers (PCPs) is often suboptimal, which can lead to diminished health care quality and safety. It is unclear what hospital information PCPs would find most valuable in their patients' continuing care, as is how and when they would prefer to receive such information. ...