PURPOSE We describe the proportion of family physicians providing care of any sort to pregnant women in the United States from 2000 to 2009. METHODS We used a repeat, cross-sectional design with data from the nationally representative Integrated Health Interview Series (2000-2009) for respondents who reported being pregnant at the time of the survey (N = 3,204). Using multivariate logistic re...

When provided by a skilled, multidisciplinary team, palliative care is highly effective at addressing the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of dying patients and their families. However, some patients who have witnessed harsh death want reassurance that they can escape if their suffering becomes intolerable. In addition, a small percentage of terminally ill patients receiving...

BACKGROUND Advanced laboratory investigations at reference laboratories play a key role in the diagnosis of the disease, but misuse of this precious and expensive tool may misguide the physician in patient management. This study was carried out as an audit of investigations performed at a reference laboratory, in order to assess their cost effectiveness, to identify various errors, the degree o...

Background: Discussions around driving cessation between clinicians and dementia patients are challenging. Patients view giving up their license as losing independence. We sought to develop a tool that enables standardized consistent messaging across working in specialist memory clinic, the span of cognitive disorders Methods: developed recommendations generator allows produce information hando...

Recent proposals for re-defining the roles Africa’s health workforce are a continuation of the discussions that have been held since colonial times. The proposals have centred on basing the continent’s healthcare delivery on non-physician clinicians (NPCs) who can be quickly trained and widely distributed to treat majority of the common diseases. Whilst seemingly logical, the success of these p...

OBJECTIVE To analyze whether computer-generated reminders about infections could influence clinicians' practice patterns and consequently improve the detection and management of nosocomial infections. DESIGN The conclusions produced by an expert system developed to detect and manage infections were presented to the attending clinicians in a pediatric hospital to determine whether this informa...

INTRODUCTION Patient satisfaction is a commonly assessed dimension of emergency department (ED) care quality. The ability of ED clinicians to estimate patient satisfaction is unknown. We sought to evaluate the ability of emergency medicine resident physicians and nurses to predict patient-reported satisfaction with physician and nursing care, pain levels, and understanding of discharge instruct...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The current study was aimed at exploring the challenges that arise in the doctor-patient relationship when the patient is also a physician and identifying strategies physicians use to meet these challenges. No previous research has systematically investigated primary care physicians' perspectives on caring for physician-patients. METHODS Family medicine (n=15) and ge...

Most existing estimates of the shortage of primary care physicians are based on simple ratios, such as one physician for every 2,500 patients. These estimates do not consider the impact of such ratios on patients' ability to get timely access to care. They also do not quantify the impact of changing patient demographics on the demand side and alternative methods of delivering care on the supply...

OBJECTIVE There are numerous challenges to successfully integrating palliative care in the intensive care unit. Our primary goal was to describe and compare the quality of palliative care delivered in an intensive care unit as rated by physicians and nurses working in that intensive care unit. DESIGN Multisite study using self-report questionnaires. SETTING Thirteen hospitals throughout the...