BACKGROUND Pneumonia is the eighth leading cause of death in Canada. Use of guideline-concordant therapy tempers the development of resistance, decreases health care costs, and reduces morbidity and mortality. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to optimize the treatment of patients with pneumonia under hospitalist care by focusing on best practice and local antibiogram data. The objecti...

QUALITY ISSUE Omitting time-critical medications leads to delays in treatment and may result in patient harm. INITIAL ASSESSMENT Published studies show that omission of prescribed medication doses is common. Although most are inconsequential, up to 86% of omitted medications place patients at some risk of harm. SOLUTION Funding was obtained to develop a medication safety package to facilita...

OBJECTIVES (1) To quantify the effect of using different public health competence frameworks to audit the curriculum of an online distance learning MPH program, and (2) to measure variation in the outcomes of the audit depending on which competence framework is used. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective audit. METHODS We compared the teaching content of an online distance learning MPH program against...

Program evaluation is an important part of any educational system and provides very useful information on how to design and implement educational programs  A comprehensive program evaluation can inform the policymakers about the effectiveness of the training and provides feedback that can be effective in achieving the desired goals.  

BACKGROUND Although antipsychotic polytherapy is considered appropriate in limited circumstances (e.g., during a brief "cross-titration" period when switching medications), its increasing prevalence indicates use beyond this limited scope. Despite absence of support in the medical literature and higher costs, antipsychotic polytherapy is common in the treatment of schizophrenia and related diso...

BACKGROUND There is substantial evidence about the effectiveness of audit with feedback, but none that we know have been conducted in home care settings. The primary purpose of the Data for Improvement and Clinical Excellence - Home Care (DICE-HC) project was to evaluate the effects of an audit and feedback delivered to care providers on home care client outcomes. The objective of this paper is...