Background and Objectives: MThe Emergency Severity Index (ESI) triage is commonly used in clinical settings to determine the patients’ emergency severity. However, the reliability of this index is not sufficiently explored. The present study examines the inter-rater reliability of ESI by comparing triage ratings as performed by nurses and physicians. Methods: This prospective cross-sectional st...

BACKGROUND The activities and work demands of medical professionals, including occupational physicians (OPs), fall into three categories: clinical, academic, and administrative. Work demands of an OP consist of these three categories and additional specialty specific roles and competencies. Research on the core competencies and skills required for OPs have identified high levels of consensus am...

BACKGROUND Acute allergic reactions often occur in out-of-hospital settings, and some of these reactions may cause death in the short term. However, initial diagnosis, management and processing of acute allergic reactions by Medical Emergency Dispatch Centres are not documented. The aim of the present study was to describe acute allergic reactions and their management by a Medical Emergency Dis...

INTRODUCTION Each year, more than 10 million children younger than five years of age die. The large majority of these deaths occur in the developing world. The verbal autopsy (VA) is a tool designed to ascertain cause of death in such settings. While VA has been validated against hospital diagnosed cause of death, there has been no research conducted to better understand the factors that may in...

BACKGROUND The correspondence of satisfaction ratings between physicians and patients can be assessed on different dimensions. One may examine whether they differ between the two groups or focus on measures of association or agreement. The aim of our study was to evaluate methodological difficulties in calculating the correspondence between patient and physician satisfaction ratings and to show...

Limited information is available from large clinical investigations about the agreement among sources of diagnoses for endpoints. The authors used data from the Women's Health Initiative clinical trials and observational study from January 1994 to November 2000 to evaluate the agreement among self-report, hospital discharge codes, and two different levels of physician review of medical records ...

OBJECTIVE Little empirical evidence exists to support either side of the ongoing debate over whether legalising physician aid in dying would undermine patient trust. DESIGN A random national sample of 1117 US adults were asked about their level of agreement with a statement that they would trust their doctor less if "euthanasia were legal [and] doctors were allowed to help patients die". RE...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the reliability of a manikin format, patient-reported joint count in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), and to detect changes in agreement at a second visit. METHODS Patients with JIA aged 12-21 were asked to mark joints with active arthritis on a manikin before their regular clinic visit. The physician then performed a joint count without having seen the patient's ass...

PURPOSE We evaluated the performance of organ contour propagation from a planning computed tomography to cone-beam computed tomography with deformable image registration by comparing contours to manual contouring. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sixteen patients were retrospectively identified based on showing considerable physical change throughout the course of treatment. Multiple organs in the 3 reg...

Objective: Little empirical evidence exists to support either side of the ongoing debate over whether legalising physician aid in dying would undermine patient trust. Design: A random national sample of 1117 US adults were asked about their level of agreement with a statement that they would trust their doctor less if ‘‘euthanasia were legal [and] doctors were allowed to help patients die’’. Re...