Drs. Fixler and Wright should be commended for demonstrating that operating room (OR) performance indicator definitions vary in literature and among children’s hospitals. Unfortunately, I do not agree with their conclusion that the most logical course would be for professional associations to agree upon and develop common metrics and definitions. Their conclusion is based on a limited review of...

Robert Terry and colleagues present working definitions of operational research, implementation research, and health systems research within the context of research to strengthen health systems.

OBJECTIVE to develop indicators for the nursing outcome Swallowing Status and the respective conceptual and operational definitions validated by experts and in a clinical setting among patients after having experienced a stroke. METHOD methodological study with concept analysis and content and clinical validations. The Content Validation Index was verified for the scores assigned by 11 expert...

OBJECTIVES Sedation-related adverse events in critically ill pediatric patients lack reproducible operational definitions and reference standards. Understanding these adverse events is essential to improving the quality of patient care and for developing prevention strategies in critically ill children. The purpose of this study was to test operational definitions and estimate the rate and site...

We propose operational method with recourse to generalized forms of orthogonal polynomials for solution of a variety of differential equations of mathematical physics. Operational definitions of generalized families of orthogonal polynomials are used in this context. Integral transforms and the operational exponent together with some special functions are also employed in the solutions. The exa...

BACKGROUND Though pharmacy claims data are commonly used to study medication adherence, there remains no standard operational definition for adherence especially for patients on multiple medications. Even when studies use the same terminology, the actual methods of calculating adherence can differ drastically. It is unclear whether the use of different definitions results in different conclusio...