The high cost of hospitalization for hemodialysis patients has become a major health care issue. To address this issue, length of hospital stay and costs for these patients were compared with services covered by nephrologists and services covered by internists. Hemodialysis patients (n = 161) were prospectively admitted 219 times on alternate days to services covered by nephrologists or by inte...

Although primary care has been recognized as an essential element of the healthcare system, the primary healthcare of Korea has not been highly valued. Listening to the voices of physicians who are engaged in primary care should be the first step for improving the level of primary care in Korea. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of general internists to investigate their perspe...

BACKGROUND The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has recommended the use of annual or biennial fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) and flexible sigmoidoscopy in the periodic health examination of asymptomatic people over 50 years of age. Therefore, we decided to ascertain the current colorectal cancer (CRC) screening practices and attitudes of surgeons, gastroenterologists and interni...

BACKGROUND Post-operative complications are a significant source of morbidity and mortality for patients undergoing surgery. However, there is little research in the emerging field of perioperative medicine beyond cardiac risk stratification. We sought to determine the research priorities for perioperative medicine using a cross sectional survey of Canadian and American general internists. ME...

BACKGROUND Adherence to clinical practice guidelines for management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is suboptimal. The purposes of this study were to identify practice patterns and barriers among U.S. general internists and family physicians in regard to cardiovascular risk management, and examine the association between physician characteristics and cardiovascular risk management. METHODS A ...

BACKGROUND The release of the report 'To err is human' put medical safety and the disclosure of errors to the forefront of the health care agenda. Disclosure of medical errors by physicians is vital in this process. We studied the role of background and social psychological factors in internists' willingness to report medical errors. METHODS Survey among a random sample of internists from fiv...