Commonly Used Screening Instruments to Identify Frailty Among Community-Dwelling Older People in a General Practice (Primary Care) Setting: A Study of Diagnostic Test Accuracy.

BACKGROUND: Rapid frailty screening remains problematic in primary care. The diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) of several screening instruments has not been sufficiently established. We evaluated the DTA of several screening instruments against two reference standards: Fried's Frailty Phenotype [FP] and the Adelaide Frailty Index [AFI]), a self-reported questionnaire. METHODS: DTA study within three general practices in South Australia. We randomly recruited 243 general practice patients aged 75+ years. Eligible participants were 75+ years, proficient in English and community-dwelling. We excluded those who were receiving palliative care, hospitalized or living in a residential care facility.We calculated sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, likelihood ratios, Youden Index and area under the curve (AUC) for: Edmonton Frail Scale [EFS], FRAIL Scale Questionnaire [FQ], Gait Speed Test [GST], Groningen Frailty Indicator [GFI], Kihon Checklist [KC], Polypharmacy [POLY], PRISMA-7 [P7], Reported Edmonton Frail Scale [REFS], Self-Rated Health [SRH] and Timed Up and Go [TUG]) against FP [3+ criteria] and AFI [>0.21]. RESULTS: We obtained valid data for 228 participants, with missing scores for index tests multiply imputed. Frailty prevalence was 17.5% frail, 56.6% prefrail [FP], and 48.7% frail, 29.0% prefrail [AFI]. Of the index tests KC (Se: 85.0% [70.2-94.3]; Sp: 73.4% [66.5-79.6]) and REFS (Se: 87.5% [73.2-95.8]; Sp: 75.5% [68.8-81.5]), both against FP, showed sufficient diagnostic accuracy according to our prespecified criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Two screening instruments-the KC and REFS, show the most promise for wider implementation within general practice, enabling a personalized approach to care for older people with frailty.

Diagnostic test accuracy of self-reported screening instruments in identifying frailty in community-dwelling older people: A systematic review.

Against a backdrop of aging populations worldwide, it has become increasingly important to identify frailty screening instruments suitable for community settings. Self-reported and/or administered instruments might offer significant simplicity and efficiency advantages over clinician-administered instruments, but their comparative diagnostic test accuracy has yet to be systematically examined. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the diagnostic test accuracy of self-reported and/or self-administered frailty screening instruments against two widely accepted frailty reference standards (the frailty phenotype and the Frailty Index) within community-dwelling older adult populations. We carried out a systematic search of the Embase, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, PEDro, PsycINFO, ProQuest Dissertations, Open Grey and GreyLit databases up to April 2017 (with an updated search carried out over May-July 2018) to identify studies reporting comparison of self-reported and/or self-administered frailty screening instruments against an appropriate reference standard, with a minimum sensitivity threshold of 80% and specificity threshold of 60%. We identified 24 studies that met our selection criteria. Four self-reported screening instruments across three studies met minimum sensitivity and specificity thresholds. However, in most cases, study design considerations limited the reliability and generalizability of the results. Additionally, meta-analysis was not carried out, because no more than three studies were available for any of the unique combinations of index tests and reference standards. Although the present study has shown that a number of self-reported frailty screening instruments reported sensitivity and specificity within a desirable range for community application, additional diagnostic test accuracy studies are required. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2020; 20: 14-24.

Hospital nurse-staffing models and patient- and staff-related outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Nurses comprise the largest component of the health workforce worldwide and numerous models of workforce allocation and profile have been implemented. These include changes in skill mix, grade mix or qualification mix, staff-allocation models, staffing levels, nursing shifts, or nurses' work patterns. This is the first update of our review published in 2011. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this review was to explore the effect of hospital nurse-staffing models on patient and staff-related outcomes in the hospital setting, specifically to identify which staffing model(s) are associated with: 1) better outcomes for patients, 2) better staff-related outcomes, and, 3) the impact of staffing model(s) on cost outcomes. SEARCH METHODS: CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, two other databases and two trials registers were searched on 22 March 2018 together with reference checking, citation searching and contact with study authors to identify additional studies. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included randomised trials, non-randomised trials, controlled before-after studies and interrupted-time-series or repeated-measures studies of interventions relating to hospital nurse-staffing models. Participants were patients and nursing staff working in hospital settings. We included any objective reported measure of patient-, staff-related, or economic outcome. The most important outcomes included in this review were: nursing-staff turnover, patient mortality, patient readmissions, patient attendances at the emergency department (ED), length of stay, patients with pressure ulcers, and costs. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: We worked independently in pairs to extract data from each potentially relevant study and to assess risk of bias and the certainty of the evidence. MAIN RESULTS: We included 19 studies, 17 of which were included in the analysis and eight of which we identified for this update. We identified four types of interventions relating to hospital nurse-staffing models:- introduction of advanced or specialist nurses to the nursing workforce;- introduction of nursing assistive personnel to the hospital workforce;- primary nursing; and- staffing models.The studies were conducted in the USA, the Netherlands, UK, Australia, and Canada and included patients with cancer, asthma, diabetes and chronic illness, on medical, acute care, intensive care and long-stay psychiatric units. The risk of bias across studies was high, with limitations mainly related to blinding of patients and personnel, allocation concealment, sequence generation, and blinding of outcome assessment.The addition of advanced or specialist nurses to hospital nurse staffing may lead to little or no difference in patient mortality (3 studies, 1358 participants). It is uncertain whether this intervention reduces patient readmissions (7 studies, 2995 participants), patient attendances at the ED (6 studies, 2274 participants), length of stay (3 studies, 907 participants), number of patients with pressure ulcers (1 study, 753 participants), or costs (3 studies, 617 participants), as we assessed the evidence for these outcomes as being of very low certainty. It is uncertain whether adding nursing assistive personnel to the hospital workforce reduces costs (1 study, 6769 participants), as we assessed the evidence for this outcome to be of very low certainty. It is uncertain whether primary nursing (3 studies, > 464 participants) or staffing models (1 study, 647 participants) reduces nursing-staff turnover, or if primary nursing (2 studies, > 138 participants) reduces costs, as we assessed the evidence for these outcomes to be of very low certainty. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this review should be treated with caution due to the limited amount and quality of the published research that was included. We have most confidence in our finding that the introduction of advanced or specialist nurses may lead to little or no difference in one patient outcome (i.e. mortality) with greater uncertainty about other patient outcomes (i.e. readmissions, ED attendance, length of stay and pressure ulcer rates). The evidence is of insufficient certainty to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of other types of interventions, including new nurse-staffing models and introduction of nursing assistive personnel, on patient, staff and cost outcomes. Although it has been seven years since the original review was published, the certainty of the evidence about hospital nurse staffing still remains very low.

Morphological, functional and neurological outcomes of craniectomy versus cranial vault remodeling for isolated nonsyndromic synostosis of the sagittal suture: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Craniosynostosis is a condition characterized by the premature closure of one or more of the cranial vault sutures. It can occur alone or in association with other congenital defects and may be part of a syndrome. The sagittal suture is most commonly affected, comprising 40-60% of cases. Premature fusion of the sagittal suture can cause scaphocephaly due to compensatory anterior-posterior growth of the skull. This is morphologically considered as a narrow elongated skull with a decreased cephalic index, and is diagnosed clinically and/or radiologically. Both the indications for surgery and the techniques used have varied with time and location. Surgical techniques have evolved, from limited craniectomy to calvarial remodeling. In recent times a return to craniectomy methods has occurred with the more recent introduction of endoscopic methods. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this review were to identify and synthesize the best available evidence on the morphological, functional and neurological outcomes of craniectomy compared to cranial vault remodeling. INCLUSION CRITERIA: This review considered studies of infants with primary isolated sagittal synostosis operated on or before the mean age of 24 months. The intervention of interest was local craniectomy and this was compared to cranial vault remodeling. Morphological (primary), functional and neurological (secondary) outcomes were included. Mortality, complications and aesthetic outcome were included as tertiary outcomes. METHODS: A comprehensive search was undertaken across major databases. The retrieved studies were assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological validity prior to inclusion. Data was then extracted and, where possible, pooled in statistical meta-analysis. For descriptive studies, where statistical pooling was not possible, the findings are presented in narrative form. RESULTS: Search and retrieval: Based on critical appraisal, 27 studies were considered to be suitable for this review. These studies were all descriptive in nature. Meta-analysis was only possible for the primary morphological outcome (post-operative cephalic index).Morphological (cephalic index):At one year follow-up, post-operatively remodeling offers an advantage over craniectomy (Z = 4.16, P<0.0001)Morphological:Improvements of the cephalic index to varying degrees were seen in patients receiving either procedure and there is not enough evidence to suggest that either treatment group had greater improvement over the other.Functional and neurological:Although their global scores may be comparable to an age-matched population, patients with sagittal synostosis who have undergone a surgical repair of any type may have discrepancies in specific domains and may be at risk of developing learning disorders. There is insufficient primary research with inter-procedure comparisons of preoperative and postoperative cognitive and neurological outcomes.Tertiary outcomes:There is not enough evidence to comment on mortality or postoperative infection in either treatment group. Patients undergoing cranial vault remodeling have a higher rate of transfusion compared to those undergoing craniectomy; however, it is likely that this difference relates to elective transfusion based on hospital-specific protocols. It remains unknown whether there is an inherently higher need for transfusion in patients undergoing remodeling procedures. Delaying surgery however may increase the risk of raised intracranial pressure (ICP) and its associated complications. Whilst there is no evidence for raised ICP post-craniectomy, a few studies have shown raised ICP in patients post-remodeling. There is not enough evidence to establish a relationship between both procedures and raised ICP. Aesthetic outcome appears to be "better" in patients who undergo remodeling; however, there is little rigorous evidence to support this hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: Conclusions were drawn from both the meta-analysis and the narrative results.When comparing the mean change in cephalic index one year after surgery, remodeling was shown to be superior to limited craniectomy in patients with isolated synostosis of the sagittal suture. However both procedures were seen to give improvements at short, medium and longer term time points. Improvements in cephalic index may be sustained, deteriorate or improve over time; based on the current data neither procedure offers a clear long-term advantage over the other. Longer follow-up is required to compare outcomes at different time points.Patients who have surgery (any type) for isolated sagittal synostosis may have deficiencies in different subdomains at later school-age testing, whilst maintaining an age-appropriate global intelligence quotient (IQ) and school performance. There is no evidence to suggest that surgery of either type imparts any benefit in terms of functional or neurological outcomes.There is no evidence to suggest that surgery of either type imparts any benefit in terms of functional or neurological outcomes. While school performance and general IQ may be comparable to age-matched controls, patients with sagittal synostosis who have undergone surgical repair of any type may be at risk of deficiencies in sub-areas of testing and be at risk of learning disorders.There is insufficient evidence regarding mortality, infection, postoperative ICP and aesthetic outcome. While transfusion rates were greater in the remodeling group, this may be due to higher rates of elective transfusion.The inconclusive findings indicate an ongoing need for higher quality primary research comparing the morphological and functional outcomes of craniectomy and cranial vault remodeling in primary sagittal synostosis. Outcomes should be measured in both the short and long term.

Piloting an online incident reporting system in Australasian emergency medicine.

BACKGROUND: Medical-specific incident reporting systems are critical to understanding error in healthcare but underreporting by doctors reduces their value. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a pilot study of the implementation of an online ED-specific incident reporting system in Australasian hospitals and evaluated its use. METHODS: The reporting system was based on the literature and input of experts. Thirty-one hospital EDs were approached to pilot the Emergency Medicine Events Register (EMER). The pilot evaluated: website usage and analytics, reporting behaviours and rates, the quality of information collected in EMER. Semi-structured interviews of three site champions responsible for implementing EMER were conducted. RESULTS: Seventeen EDs expressed interest; however, due to delays and other barriers reporting only occurred at three sites. Over 354 days, the website received 362 unique visitors and 77 incidents. The median time to report was 4.6 min. The reporting rate was 0.07 reports per doctor month, suggesting a reporting rate of 0.08% of ED presentations. Data quality, as measured by the number of completed non-mandatory fields and ability to classify incidents, was very high. The interviews identified enablers (the EMER system, site champions) and barriers (chiefly the context of EM) to EMER uptake. CONCLUSIONS: Collecting patient safety information by frontline doctors is essential to actively engage the profession in patent safety. Although the EMER system allowed easy online reporting of high quality incident data by doctors, site recruitment and system uptake proved difficult. System use by ED doctors requires dedicated and conscious effort from the profession.

Failures in transition: learning from incidents relating to clinical handover in acute care.

The appropriate handover of patients, whereby responsibility and accountability of care is transferred between healthcare providers, is a critical component of quality healthcare delivery. This paper examines data from recent incidents relating to clinical handover in acute care settings, in order to provide a basis for the design and implementation of preventive and corrective strategies. A sample of incidents (n = 459) relating to clinical handover was extracted from an Australian health service's incident reporting system using a manual search function. Incident narratives were subjected to classification according to the system safety and quality concepts of failure type, error type, and failure detection mechanism. The most prevalent failure types associated with clinical handover were those relating to the transfer of patients without adequate handover 28.8% (n = 132), omissions of critical information about the patient's condition 19.2% (n = 88), and omissions of critical information about the patient's care plan during the handover process 14.2% (n = 65). The most prevalent failure detection mechanisms were those of expectation mismatch 35.7% (n = 174), clinical mismatch 26.9% (n = 127), and mismatch with other documentation 24.0% (n = 117). The findings suggest the need for a structured approach to handover with a recording of standardized sets of information to ensure that critical components are not omitted. Limitations of existing reporting processes are also highlighted.

Mapping the limits of safety reporting systems in health care--what lessons can we actually learn?

OBJECTIVES: To assess the utility of Australian health care incident reporting systems and determine the depth of information available within a typical system. DESIGN AND SETTING: Incidents relating to patient misidentification occurring between 2004 and 2008 were selected from a sample extracted from a number of Australian health services' incident reporting systems using a manual search function. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incident type, aetiology (error type) and recovery (error-detection mechanism). Analyses were performed to determine category saturation. RESULTS: All 487 selected incidents could be classified according to incident type. The most prevalent incident type was medication being administered to the wrong patient (25.7%, 125), followed by incidents where a procedure was performed on the wrong patient (15.2%, 74) and incidents where an order for pathology or medical imaging was mislabelled (7.0%, 34). Category saturation was achieved quickly, with about half the total number of incident types identified in the first 13.5% of the incidents. All 43 incident types were classified within 76.2% of the dataset. Fifty-two incident reports (10.7%) included sufficient information to classify specific incident aetiology, and 288 reports (59.1%) had sufficient detailed information to classify a specific incident recovery mechanism. CONCLUSIONS: Incident reporting systems enable the classification of the surface features of an incident and identify common incident types. However, current systems provide little useful information on the underlying aetiology or incident recovery functions. Our study highlights several limitations of incident reporting systems, and provides guidance for improving the use of such systems in quality and safety improvement.

Establishing national medical imaging incident reporting systems: issues and challenges.

Radiology incident reporting systems provide one source of invaluable patient safety data that, when combined with appropriate analysis and action, can result in significantly safer health care, which is now an urgent priority for governments worldwide. Such systems require integration into a wider safety, quality, and risk management framework because many issues have global implications, and they also require an international classification scheme, which is now being developed. These systems can be used to inform global research activities as identified by the World Health Organization, many of which intersect with the activities of and issues seen in medical imaging departments. How to ensure that radiologists (and doctors in general) report incidents, and are engaged in the process, is a challenge. However, as demonstrated with the example of the Australian Radiology Events Register, this can be achieved when the reporting system is integrated with their professional organization and its other related activities (such as training and education) and administered by a patient safety organization.