Proceedings: A study of breast cancer on the Isle of Wight.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S Allison.
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Patients with insulin-treated diabetes need to be actively involved in their own treatment. We have found that measurement of blood rather than urinary glucose by our diabetic patients leads to greater understanding and enthusiasm as well as to better control of blood glucose. Home blood glucose monitoring is complementary to rather than a substitute for measurement of hemoglobin A1. The latter provides an objective index of long-term control that is of more use to the doctor than to the patient. The former gives the patient information that enables him to master his own disease from day to day.
Spiralling health care costs are forcing hospital administrators to find creative alternatives to traditional health care delivery systems. One of the most recent innovations rapidly gaining favour is the pre-admission program. The article describes how a well-developed pre-admission program can have a significantly positive impact on bed utilization, diagnostic services, patient satisfaction and overall quality of care, and provides examples from a successful pre-admission program implemented at the University of Alberta Hospitals.
This descriptive study used a computerized charge capture system (CCCS) to explore the differences of cost and length of stay (LOS) between cardiac inpatients with a diagnosis of depression (n = 144) and cardiac inpatients without depression (n = 9,099). Level of severity, gender, and mood state (depression vs. nondepression) were also compared. A matched sample of 352 nondepressed patients was compared with a sample of 94 depressed patients. There were no significant differences between the depressed and nondepressed groups. However, the study did indicate interesting findings regarding mood state, gender, and cardiac outcomes. Depression was significantly overrepresented among females (chi 2 = 24.0, df = 1, P < 0.05). When gender and mood state were considered together, women with cardiac disease who were depressed had significantly longer lengths of stay (LOSs) and increased costs than men with depression (F = 6.6, df = 1, P = 0.01). A major unanticipated finding was the extremely low incidence of depression detected in these patients (1.6%) when compared with patients in other studies. One possible reason for the low incidence of depression was related to the use of a financial, rather than a clinical, data set.
Preoperative teaching is an integral component of the care surgical patients receive. The need for consistent preoperative information has resulted in growing use of printed health information. There are many printed materials for nurses to choose from; however, these materials serve no useful teaching purpose if patients are unable to understand them. This study evaluates how well surgical patients understand the content presented in an educational booklet used for preoperative teaching. A Cloze test was designed to assess comprehension of a booklet prepared at a grade five reading level. Scores revealed that 84% of subjects scored above 56% and were able to comprehend the material independently; 10% scored between 44% and 56%, indicating they would require some help; and 6% scored less than 44% and were not able to comprehend the information.