OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of a targeted multifactorial falls prevention programme in elderly care wards with relatively short lengths of stay. DESIGN Cluster randomised trial. SETTING 24 elderly care wards in 12 hospitals in Sydney, Australia. PARTICIPANTS 3999 patients, mean age 79 years, with a median hospital stay of seven days. INTERVENTIONS A nurse and physiotherapist eac...

OBJECTIVE To describe patterns of transfer, resource utilization, and clinical outcomes associated with interhospital transfer of critically ill and injured children. DESIGN Secondary analysis of administrative claims data. PARTICIPANTS Children 0 to 18 years in the Michigan Medicaid program who underwent interhospital transfer for intensive care from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2004. T...

Chest pain is an important presentation in adult patients attending emergency departments (ED). The process of ruling out an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) conventionally requires a short in-patient stay. This places a significant burden on healthcare systems. Recent developments have encouraged us to explore the role of an ED observation ward in the management of these patients. We designed and...

OBJECTIVES There is little research into the constituents of effective psychiatric inpatient care. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a newly adopted model of inpatient care; the acute assessment ward. DESIGN Review of data collected over a year-long period. SETTING Acute assessment ward in North London. PARTICIPANTS All Admissions between 8 October 2009 and 7 Octobe...

INTRODUCTION AND AIM This article reports a study of a post-discharge programme for elderly patients in Norway. It took place in an intermediate ward for transitional care and was based on collaboration between a municipality and a hospital, which was part of a health enterprise. The aim of the study was to analyse the collaboration and its possible effects on the quality of patient care, and t...

BACKGROUND In March 2002 the Australian Industrial Relations Commission ordered the introduction of a new staffing method - nursing hours per patient day (NHPPD) - for implementation in Western Australia public hospitals. This method used a "bottom up" approach to classify each hospital ward into one of seven categories using characteristics such as patient complexity, intervention levels, the ...

AIM To investigate the factors associated with the functional progress of hospitalized patients following an intensive care admission. METHODS Retrospective study including data from a cohort of 198 hospitalized patients following an intensive care admission and not requiring mechanical ventilation in a single tertiary referral hospital. A generalized linear model was used to identify the mai...

Introduction: Characteristics of the patient and the coronary artery bypass grafting may predispose individuals to prolonged hospitalization, increasing costs and morbidity and mortality. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate individual and perioperative risk factors of prolonged hospitalization in intensive care units and wards. Methods: We conducted a case-control study of 10...

The profile of admissions staying less than 24 hours admitted to the paediatric wards of University Malaya Medical Center, Kuala Lumpur, over a period of six weeks was reviewed to ascertain the need of a short-stay ward. Ninety-three (22%) of the 428 admissions admitted during the study period were discharged within 24 hours, 56 (60%) were discharged within 12 hours. Major categories of admissi...

Fast-tracking in cardiac care refers to the complex intervention including early extubation, during anesthesia, mobilization and hospital discharge reduce perioperative morbidity, costs, length of stay intensive unit hospital. This review was designed evaluate extubation protocols, differences late safety efficacy among patients surgical after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The an...