Factores de riesgo asociados a estadía hospitalaria prolongada en pacientes adultos / Risk factors associated with prolonged hospital stay in adult patients

Se realizó una investigación de casos y controles de pacientes adultos ingresados en el Hospital Provincial Docente Dr Joaquín Castillo Duany de Santiago de Cuba, durante 5 meses del 2017, con el propósito de estimar el efecto de determinados factores de riesgo como modificadores de la estadía hospitalaria, así como la magnitud del impacto en la potencial reducción del grado de exposición a estos. El grupo de estudio fue conformado por 40 pacientes y el de control por 80. Predominaron las lesiones osteomioarticulares en ambos grupos (con un total de 23,3 por ciento); en tanto, para los casos resultó más frecuente una estadía hospitalaria de 13 días y para los controles fue igual o superior a los 7 días como promedio. Entre los factores de riesgo fueron definidos, con un nivel de confianza de 95 por ciento, la edad superior a los 65 años (OR: 4; IC 95 por ciento: 1,2-17), la ocurrencia de episodios adversos (OR: 26; IC 95 por ciento: 8,1-80,3) y los retrasos en las decisiones médicas (OR: 19; IC 95 por ciento: 4-89). Pudo concluirse que el diseño epidemiológico permitió establecer relaciones de causalidad en la prolongación de la estadía hospitalaria y cuantificar la magnitud de su reducción si se controlan o eliminan los riesgos

An investigation of cases and controls in adult patients admitted at Dr Joaquín Castillo Duany Provincial Hospital from Santiago de Cuba was carried out during 5 months in 2017, with the purpose of estimating the effect of certain risk factors as modifiers of the hospital stay, as well as the magnitude of the impact in the potential reduction of the exposure degree to those factors. The study group was formed by 40 patients and the control group by 80. The osteomioarticular lesions prevailed in both groups (with a total of 23.3 percent); as long as, for the cases it was more frequent a hospital stay of 13 days and for the controls, equal or longer than 7 days as average. Among the risk factors were defined, with a confidence level of 95 percent, the age older than 65 years (OR: 4; IC 95 percent: 1.2-17), the occurrence of adverse episodes (OR: 26; IC 95 percent: 8.1-80.3) and the delays in the medical decisions (OR: 19; IC 95 percent: 4-89). It could be concluded that the epidemiological design allowed to establish causality relationships in the continuity of the hospital stay and to quantify the magnitude of its reduction if risks are controlled or eliminated

Accommodating quality and service improvement research within existing ethical principles.

BACKGROUND: Quality and service improvement (QSI) research employs a broad range of methods to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery. QSI research differs from traditional healthcare research and poses unique ethical questions. Since QSI research aims to generate knowledge to enhance quality improvement efforts, should it be considered research for regulatory purposes? Is review by a research ethics committee required? Should healthcare providers be considered research participants? If participation in QSI research entails no more than minimal risk, is consent required? The lack of consensus on answers to these questions highlights the need for ethical guidance. MAIN BODY: Three distinct approaches to classifying QSI research in accordance with existing ethical principles and regulations can be found in the literature. In the first approach, QSI research is viewed as distinct from other types of healthcare research and does not require regulation. In the second approach, QSI research falls within regulatory guidelines but is exempt from research ethics committee review. In the third approach, QSI research is deemed to be part of the learning healthcare system and, as such, is subject to a different set of ethical principles entirely. In this paper, we critically assess each of these views. CONCLUSION: While none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory, we argue that use of the ethical principles governing research provides the best means of addressing the numerous questions posed by QSI research.

Indicadores de calidad en la terapia intravenosa / Analysis of quality indicators in intravenous therapy

RESUMEN Introducción: Los eventos adversos son comunes durante el uso de la terapia intravenosa, pueden causar daño al paciente y contribuir a agravar el estado de salud y la estancia hospitalaria prolongada. Además, al proporcionar acceso directo a la corriente sanguínea, los eventos adversos relacionados con la terapia intravenosa pueden tener repercusiones más graves y perjudiciales. Objetivo: Analizar indicadores de calidad relacionados con la atención de salud en la terapia intravenosa en un hospital público y de enseñanza. Métodos: Estudio descriptivo-exploratorio, transversal realizado en un hospital público, de enseñanza. Para recopilar datos se utilizó una forma adaptada compuesta por 03 indicadores: identificación de acceso venoso periférico, la identificación de goteo intravenoso para botellas de infusión y la identificación de suero y control de la velocidad de infusión de las soluciones. La muestra, intencional, consistió en 94 participantes. Resultados: Se realizaron 1 355 observaciones. De éstas, 439 fueron el acceso venoso periférico, 463 de los catéteres para la infusión intravenosa de 453 botellas de suero y medicamentos. La validez de un acceso venoso periférico, basado solo en accesos identificados correctamente, fue el único cuyo resultado de calidad de la atención (QA) era deseable (100 por ciento) y segura (83,3 por ciento); todos los demás mostraron QA mal (< 70 por ciento). Conclusión: Los resultados encontrados en este estudio están por debajo del deseado para que una asistencia de calidad en terapia intravenosa sea garantizada. La calidad de la atención en la terapia intravenosa es mucho menor que la recomendada(AU)

ABSTRACT Introduction: Adverse events are common during use of intravenous therapy can cause damage to the patient, and contribute to worsening health status and prolonged hospital stay. In addition, by providing direct access to the bloodstream, adverse events related to intravenous therapy may be more serious and harmful repercussions. Objective: To analyze the quality indicators related to health care in intravenous therapy in an extension public research teaching hospital. Methods: Descriptive and exploratory, cross-sectional study in a public hospital, teaching. For data collection, it was used an adapted form composed of 03 following indicators: identification of peripheral venous access, equipment used for intravenous infusion, serum bottles, and speed control of infusion solutions. The intentional sample was consisted of 94 participants. Results: 1355 observations were done.In these observations, 439 were of peripheral venous access, 463 of equipment used for intravenous infusion, 453 of serum bottles and medicine. Based only on properly identified access, the validity of peripheral venous access was the only one whose result of quality of care (QA) was desirable (100 percent) and safe (83,3 percent), all the others showed QA poorly (< 70 percent). Conclusions: The results found in this study are below desired for quality care in intravenous therapy is ensured. The quality of care in intravenous therapy is very lower than recommended(AU)

Who Counts? What Counts? Place and the Limits of Perinatal Mortality Measures.

Maternal and neonatal mortality statistics foreground some possible causes of death at the expense of others. Political place (nation, state) and place of birth (hospital, home) are integral to these statistics; respect for women as persons is not. Using case examples from Malawi and the United States, I argue that the focus on place embedded in these indicators can legitimate coercive approaches to childbirth. Qualitative assessments in both cases reveal that respectful care, while not represented in current indicators, is critical for the health of women and newborns. Perinatal outcomes measures thus must be rethought to ensure ethical and safe maternity care. This rethinking will require new questions and new methods.

[The respect of the right to freedom of movement, an indicator of good quality patient management]. / Le respect du droit d'aller et venir, indicateur d'une prise en charge de qualité.

Freedom of movement is at the centre of contradictory challenges for the different people working in psychiatry, faced with a society demanding social regulation and safety, and the desire of institutions to provide high quality care. This freedom, and more globally the respect of patients' civil rights, are an indicator of the expected quality of care. Taking these rights into consideration does not mean neglecting safety, but attempts to put it into perspective. This article presents the clinical case of a patient.

Reducing socioeconomic inequalities in COPD care in the hospital outpatient setting - A nationwide initiative.

OBJECTIVE: Socioeconomic differences in quality of care have been suggested to contribute to inequality in clinical prognosis of COPD. We examined socioeconomic differences in the quality of COPD outpatient care and the potential of a systematic quality improvement initiative in reducing potential socioeconomic differences. METHODS: A mandatory national quality improvement initiative has since 2008 monitored the quality of COPD care at all national pulmonary specialized outpatient clinics in Denmark using six evidence-based process performance measures. We followed patients aged ≥30 years with a first-ever outpatient contact for COPD during 2008-2012 (N = 23,741). Adjusted year-specific relative risks (RR) of fulfilling all relevant process performance measures was compared according to ethnicity, education, income, employment, and cohabitation using Poisson regression. RESULTS: Quality of care improved following the implementation of the clinical improvement initiative with 11% of COPD patients receiving optimal care in 2008 compared to 57% in 2012. Substantial socioeconomic differences were observed the first year: immigrants (RR 0.41, 95% CI 0.21-0.82), the unemployed (RR 0.37, 95% CI 0.18-0.74), disability pensioners (RR 0.63, 95% CI 0.46-0.87) and patients living alone (RR 0.80, 95% CI 0.60-0.97) were less likely to receive all relevant care processes, whereas those with highest education (RR 1.22, 95% CI 0.92-1.63) were more likely to receive these processes. These differences were eliminated during the study period. CONCLUSION: A systematic quality improvement initiative including regular audits, knowledge sharing, and detailed disease-specific recommendations for care improvement may increase the overall quality of care and considerably modify the substantial socioeconomic inequalities in COPD management.

Alternation as a form of allocation for quality improvement studies in primary healthcare settings: the on-off study design.

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials are considered the "gold standard" for scientific rigor in the assessment of benefits and harms of interventions in healthcare. They may not always be feasible, however, when evaluating quality improvement interventions in real-world healthcare settings. Non-randomized controlled trials (NCTs) are designed to answer questions of effectiveness of interventions in routine clinical practice to inform a decision or process. The on-off NCT design is a relatively new design where participant allocation is by alternation. In alternation, eligible patients are allocated to the intervention "on" or control "off " groups in time series dependent sequential clusters. METHODS: We used two quality improvement studies undertaken in a Canadian primary care setting to illustrate the features of the on-off design. We also explored the perceptions and experiences of healthcare providers tasked with implementing the on-off study design. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The on-off design successfully allocated patients to intervention and control groups. Imbalances between baseline variables were attributed to chance, with no detectable biases. However, healthcare providers' perspectives and experiences with the design in practice reveal some conflict. Specifically, providers described the process of allocating patients to the off group as unethical and immoral, feeling it was in direct conflict with their professional principle of providing care for all. The degree of dissatisfaction seemed exacerbated by: 1) the patient population involved (e.g., patient population viewed as high-risk (e.g., depressed or suicidal)), 2) conducting assessments without taking action (e.g., administering the PHQ-9 and not acting on the results), and 3) the (non-blinded) allocation process. CONCLUSIONS: Alternation, as in the on-off design, is a credible form of allocation. The conflict reported by healthcare providers in implementing the design, while not unique to the on-off design, may be alleviated by greater emphasis on the purpose of the research and having research assistants allocate patients and collect data instead of the healthcare providers implementing the trial. In addition, consultation with front-line staff implementing the trials with an on-off design on appropriateness to the setting (e.g., alignment with professional values and the patient population served) may be beneficial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Health Eating and Active Living with Diabetes: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00991380. Date registered: 7 October 2009. Controlled trial of a collaborative primary care team model for patients with diabetes and depression: Clintrials.gov Identifier: NCT01328639 Date registered: 30 March 2011.

Ethical Issues in Patient Safety Research: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

As many as 1 in 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care in wealthy countries. The risk of health care-associated infection in some developing countries is as much as 20 times higher. In response, in many global regions, increased attention has turned to the implementation of a broad program of safety research, encompassing a variety of methods. Although important international ethical guidelines for research exist, literature has been emerging in the last 20 years that begins to apply such guidelines to patient safety research specifically. This paper provides a review of the literature related to ethics, oversight, and patient safety research; identifies issues highlighted in articles as being of ethical relevance; describes areas of consensus regarding how to respond to these ethical issues; and highlights areas where additional ethical analysis and discussion are needed to provide guidance to those in the field.

Public reporting of cardiac surgery performance: Part 1--history, rationale, consequences.

Cardiac surgical report cards have historically been mandatory. This paradigm changed when The Society of Thoracic Surgeons recently implemented a voluntary public reporting program based on benchmark analyses from its National Cardiac Database. The primary rationale is to provide transparency and accountability, thus affirming the fundamental ethical right of patient autonomy. Previous studies suggest that public reporting facilitates quality improvement, although other approaches such as confidential feedback of results and regional quality improvement initiatives are also effective. Public reporting has not substantially impacted patient referral patterns or market share. However, this may change with implementation of healthcare reform and with refinement of public reporting formats to enhance consumer interpretability. Finally, the potential unintended adverse consequences of public reporting must be monitored, particularly to assure that hospitals and surgeons remain willing to care for high-risk patients.

Pay-for-virtue: an option to improve pay-for-performance?

Pay-for-performance schemes reward standardized professional behaviours associated with effective care. However, they neglect the significance of virtue and devalue and erode professional motivation based on virtue. Pay for training to cultivate virtue, and/or pay-for-virtue, may mitigate these dangers. Although virtue is typically considered its own reward, and the assessment of virtue is problematic, pay-for-virtue could involve (1) stringent checks on the appropriateness of the standardized care currently rewarded by pay-for-performance for individual patients or (2) pay for indicators of virtue. These indicators could be based on virtues identified from a framework of universal virtues and through logical inferences from features of practice. It is possible that pay-for-virtue could ultimately strengthen health professionals' intrinsic motivation for good practice, but this and the broader effects of pay-for-virtue would need careful investigation.

O atendimento à saúde de homens: estudo qualitativo em quatro estados brasileiros / Men's public health care: a qualitative study in four Brazilian federal states

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar os sentidos atribuídos por usuários homens ao atendimento que lhes é prestado no âmbito da atenção básica à saúde, buscando subsidiar a construção de indicadores qualitativos de satisfação em relação ao uso desses serviços por usuários masculinos. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, envolvendo entrevistas semiestruturadas com 201 usuários de quatro estados brasileiros. A análise se baseia no método de interpretação de sentidos, ancorando-se em princípios hermenêutico-dialéticos. Em termos de resultados, os usuários apontam critérios para avaliar positivamente os serviços, tomando como referências um atendimento comunicativo e atencioso, que lhes faça algo e que revele prontidão. Conclui-se que os homens usuários idealizam e reivindicam uma dada forma de atendimento considerada boa e que, a princípio, poderia servir para se discutir o atendimento de mulheres também. Entretanto, em razão da socialização que homens e mulheres experimentam, são reforçadas as diferenças entre o ser usuário homem e ser usuário mulher. Por outro lado, tanto no que tange aos profissionais quanto aos usuários, essa mesma segmentação por gênero pode contribuir para que se acirrem as impossibilidades de se lidar com as especificidades de homens e mulheres, em termos de demandas da saúde.

This study aims to analyze the meanings attributed by male users to the health care provided to them by the primary health care. It also tries to hook up the construction of qualitative indicators of satisfaction with the use of such services by males. For this purpose, a qualitative study was conducted, involving semi-structured interviews with 201 users from four Brazilian federal states. The data has been analyzed under the method of interpretation of meanings inbuilt in hermeneutic-dialectical principles. As for the results, users were asked to point toward criteria to evaluate positively the services, taking as reference a communicative and attentive service, as long as it makes a difference to them as well as bring up readiness. As a conclusion, it was found that male users outlook the services through rose-tinted glasses and therefore claim a particular form of care grounded on that assumption. Moreover, this conclusion could also be used to discuss the health care of women as well. On the other hand, due to the socialization that men and women experience, differences between male and female users could be reinforced. Conversely, regarding to both professionals and users, this gender segmentation may add to bring about the impossibilities of dealing with the specifics of men and women in terms of public health care demands.

The role of quality tools in assessing reliability of the internet for health information.

The Internet has made it possible for patients and their families to access vast quantities of information that previously would have been difficult for anyone but a physician or librarian to obtain. Health information websites, however, are recognised to differ widely in quality and reliability of their content. This has led to the development of various codes of conduct or quality rating tools to assess the quality of health websites. However, the validity and reliability of these quality tools and their applicability to different health websites also varies. In principle, rating tools should be available to consumers, require a limited number of elements to be assessed, be assessable in all elements, be readable and be able to gauge the readability and consistency of information provided from a patient's view point. This article reviews the literature on the trends of the Internet use for health and analyses various codes of conduct/ethics or 'quality tools' available to monitor the quality of health websites from a patient perspective.

Quality measurement in orthopaedics: the purchasers' view.

While all of medicine is under pressure to increase transparency and accountability, joint replacement subspecialists will face special scrutiny. Disclosures of questionable consulting fees, a demographic shift to younger patients, and uncertainty about the marginal benefits of product innovation in a time of great cost pressure invite a serious and progressive response from the profession. Current efforts to standardize measures by the National Quality Forum and PQRI will not address the concerns of purchasers, payors, or policy makers. Instead, they will ask the profession to document its commitment to appropriateness, stewardship of resources, coordination of care, and patient-centeredness. One mechanism for addressing these expectations is voluntary development of a uniform national registry for joint replacements that includes capture of preoperative appropriateness indicators, device monitoring information, revision rates, and structured postoperative patient followup. A national registry should support performance feedback and quality improvement activity, but it must also be designed to satisfy payor, purchaser, policymaker, and patient needs for information. Professional societies in orthopaedics should lead a collaborative process to develop metrics, infrastructure, and reporting formats that support continuous improvement and public accountability.

Normalización del discurso homofobico: aspectos bioéticos / Normalizing homophobic discourse: bioethical considerations

La homofobia está presente en todo discurso, sólo que por la normalización de ciertas conductas de rechazo hacia los homosexuales no nos percatamos. Este artículo analiza específicamente el discurso homofóbico del personal de salud. La ética profesional dicta que este personal trate con respeto y dignidad a los pacientes; sin embargo, se ha comprobado que existen actitudes prejuiciadas en las instituciones de salud que disminuyen la posibilidad de ayuda al paciente y generan mala relación y desconfianza.

The homophobia is present in all social discourses, but we do not realize it due to the normalization of certain rejection behaviors against homosexual persons. This paper analyzes specifically the homophobic discourse of health care personnel. The professional ethics dictates this personnel treats with respect and dignity to all patients. Nevertheless it has been proved that there are some prejudice attitudes in health care centers which diminish the possibility of health care assistances to patients and generate a poor and distrusted relationship between the health care professional and the patient.

A homofobia está presente em todo discurso, e não nos damos conta de certas condutas de rejeição aos homossexuais. Este artigo analisa especificamente o discurso homofóbico dos profissionais da saúde. A ética profissional diz que estes profissionais tratem com respeito e dignidade ao paciente, contudo, comprovou-se que existem atitudes prejudiciais nas instituições de saúde que diminuem a possibilidade de ajuda ao paciente e geram uma relação de desconfiança.