CONTEXT Various predictors have been used to predict diabetic patients who are likely to have increased ventilatory hours and an increased length of stay (LOS) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) as well as in the hospital after undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, for example, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The authors propose a simple bed-side test, i.e., the prayer sign ...

This qualitative study was performed at the adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a public hospital in Southern Brazil with the objective to evaluate the implemented welcoming strategies. Participants included 13 patients and 23 relatives. Data collection was performed from July to October 2008, utilizing semi-structured interviews. All interviews were recorded. Data analysis was performed using t...

     Medication errors (MEs) are the most common error in ICUs. In fact, 78% of all serious errors in ICUs are due to MEs. Therefore, detecting MEs has vital significance. The goal of this study was to investigate the frequency, type and consequences of different types of errors including prescribing, transcribing and administration errors in an ICU of a large teaching hospital. Disguised direc...

BACKGROUND Improving the cost-effectiveness of health care requires an understanding of the genesis of health care costs and in particular the sources of cost variation. Little is known about how multiple physicians, caring collaboratively for patients, contribute to costs. OBJECTIVE To explore the effect of collaborative care by physicians on variation in discretionary costs in an intensive ...

Objectives The accurate measurement of geographic patterns of health care utilization is a prerequisite for the study of geographic variations in health care utilization. While several measures have been developed to measure how accurately geographic units reflect the health care utilization patterns of residents, they have been only applied to hospitalization and need further evaluation. This ...

Forty-four patients undergoing coronary artery surgery were allocated randomly to receive an infusion of propofol or methohexitone as a hypnotic supplement to a fentanyl-based anaesthetic technique. A taped message was played to the patients, consisting of 10 words associated with prompt sentences and a suggestion for a specific postoperative behavioural response. Twenty patients (10 propofol a...