A 360-degree performance evaluation of emergency medicine ward in Alzahra Hospital.

BACKGROUND: In educational hospitals, in addition to providing care, emergency medicine department plays an important role in providing education and increasing the quality of care and education. This study was an endeavor to evaluate the performance of emergency medicine department in different areas such as education, service provision and interaction with other departments. METHODS: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study performed as a 360-degree evaluation. The stakeholders taking part in this evaluation included residents, interns, attendants, administrators, nurses, and patients. Particular questionnaires for each group was developed based on the data achieved in the focus groups. Structured interviews were used to collect data from patients. Patients' medical files were investigated in order to extract performance indices of emergency medicine department. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square, and t-tests by SPSS. RESULTS: Based on the achieved data, patients' waiting time for the first visit of the emergency physician was 13.18 minutes in average. The mean of outpatients' waiting time (29.82 minutes) was higher than that of patients requiring hospitalization. In most cases (79%), similar first and final diagnoses were made. In addition, 93.5% of patients hospitalized in the emergency ward were highly satisfied with services received from the specialists while 6.5%were averagely satisfied. The highest performance scores to the emergency medicine department were given by the interns with the mean of 4.24 out of 5 performance. CONCLUSION: The results of the emergency department evaluation by different groups as well as indices showing the performance of this department revealed its overall performance in educational, clinical, and interactional areas as good. The findings of this study can be applied in Alzahra Hospital to promote the positive points and amend the negative points.

Household food security in isfahan based on current population survey adapted questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: Food security is a state in which all people at every time have physical and economic access to adequate food to obviate nutritional needs and live a healthy and active life. Therefore, this study was performed to quantitatively evaluate the household food security in Esfahan using the localized version of US Household Food Security Survey Module (US HFSSM). METHODS: This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed in year 2006 on 3000 households of Esfahan. The study instrument used in this work is 18-item US food security module, which is developed into a localized 15-item questionnaire. This study is performed in two stages of families with no children (under 18 years old) and families with children over 18 years old. RESULTS: The results showed that item severity coefficient, ratio of responses given by households and item infit and outfit coefficient in adult's and children's questionnaire respectively. According to obtained data, scale score of +3 in adults group is described as determination limit of slight food insecurity and +6 is stated as the limit for severe food insecurity. For children's group, scale score of +2 is defined to be the limit of slight food insecurity and +5 is the determination limit of severe food insecurity. CONCLUSIONS: The main hypothesis of this survey analysis is based on the raw scale score of USFSSM The item of "lack of enough money for buying food" (item 2) and the item of "lack of balanced meal" (3(rd) item) have the lowest severity coefficient. Then, the ascending rate of item severity continues in first item, 4(th) item and keeps increasing into 10(th) item.