BACKGROUND Doctors' strikes have a negative effect on hospital performance indicators. Hospital mortality during such strikes is the most important indicator. OBJECTIVE To determine the effects of the 2010 strike on Polokwane Hospital. METHODS Information was collected from the Hospital Information System, Polokwane Hospital Casualty Department, wards and theatres. RESULTS During the 20-d...

BACKGROUND In 2007, West London Mental Health Trust was visited by the Healthcare Commission (now the Care Quality Commission), which identified several issues needing attention. One major concern was the lack of effective interaction between nurses and service users in acute care. AIM To determine why mental health nurses on acute admissions wards struggle to spend one to one time with servi...

On entering psychiatry from general hospital posts, I found that part of my work lay in the wards for feeble, elderly patients. I felt it might be of interest to study these patients, and to see if they had all been admitted as young psychotics and grown old in hospital, or whether they had been admitted as elderly people. Also I wondered how many of them really needed mental hospital care, and...

FOR several years the National Association for Mental Health has run courses for chaplains in mental hospitals, and many of these have expressed the value of courses in their parish work. As a result of this, the National Association approached the London Churches' Group, expressing the hope that two pilot schemes might be organised; one south and one north of the river. Miss Proud, the General...

A retrospective review of hospital records for Acinetobacter baumannii infection at a US Army combat support hospital revealed a monthly infection rate ranging from 20.5 to 0 cases per 1,000 patients admitted. The rate correlated with the mean census of host-nation patients in the intensive care unit, the mean census of host-nation patients on the wards, and length of stay in the intensive care...

BACKGROUND Involuntary admission to acute psychiatric wards in Norway has not been studied empirically after the introduction of a new Mental Health Act (MHA) 1 January 2001. According to the MHA, observation with coercion can be used to clarify illness. The objectives of this study were to describe scale and circumstances associated with involuntary admissions. METHOD All patients discharged...

BACKGROUND Adverse incidents (violence, self-harm and absconding) can cause significant harm to patients and staff, are difficult to predict, and are driving an increase in security measures and defensive practice. AIMS To explore the relationship between adverse incidents on acute psychiatric wards, admissions and nursing workforce variables. METHODS A retrospective analysis of officially ...

The prevalence of resistance to high levels of gentamicin among 182 isolates of Enterococcus faecalis from 2 Iranian hospitals was 42%. Gentamicin resistance was associated with conjugative plasmids (>70 kb) in most strains. Fingerprinting using EcoRI and HindIII showed genetic variation among these plasmids and gave evidence of nosocomial outbreaks and persistence of infection in different war...

To the Editor of The Indian Medical Gazette. SlK,?During the year under report 31 cases of kala-azar were admitted into the wards of the Mitford Hospital. Three cases were remaining under treatment from the previous year. Of the new admissions, four cases absconded from the hospital within a few days after admission, before the diagnosis could be confirmed in the wards. As regards the rest the ...

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to determine how providing individualised falls prevention education facilitated behaviour change from the perspective of older hospital patients on rehabilitation wards and what barriers they identified to engaging in preventive strategies. DESIGN A prospective qualitative survey. METHODS Older patients (n=757) who were eligible (mini-mental state examin...