Improving Healthcare Quality in Europe Characteristics, Effectiveness and Implementation of Different Strategies


Book Description

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.




Sharing Clinical Trial Data


Book Description

Data sharing can accelerate new discoveries by avoiding duplicative trials, stimulating new ideas for research, and enabling the maximal scientific knowledge and benefits to be gained from the efforts of clinical trial participants and investigators. At the same time, sharing clinical trial data presents risks, burdens, and challenges. These include the need to protect the privacy and honor the consent of clinical trial participants; safeguard the legitimate economic interests of sponsors; and guard against invalid secondary analyses, which could undermine trust in clinical trials or otherwise harm public health. Sharing Clinical Trial Data presents activities and strategies for the responsible sharing of clinical trial data. With the goal of increasing scientific knowledge to lead to better therapies for patients, this book identifies guiding principles and makes recommendations to maximize the benefits and minimize risks. This report offers guidance on the types of clinical trial data available at different points in the process, the points in the process at which each type of data should be shared, methods for sharing data, what groups should have access to data, and future knowledge and infrastructure needs. Responsible sharing of clinical trial data will allow other investigators to replicate published findings and carry out additional analyses, strengthen the evidence base for regulatory and clinical decisions, and increase the scientific knowledge gained from investments by the funders of clinical trials. The recommendations of Sharing Clinical Trial Data will be useful both now and well into the future as improved sharing of data leads to a stronger evidence base for treatment. This book will be of interest to stakeholders across the spectrum of research-from funders, to researchers, to journals, to physicians, and ultimately, to patients.




Contemporary Clinical Practice


Book Description

Contemporary Clinical Practice: The Holding Environment Under Assault is devoted to the examination of contemporary social problems and their impact on the clinical process. State-of-the-art psychodynamic theories will be applied to the understanding of how war, terrorism, politics, government regulations, and other environmental problems influence interactions between clinicians and their patients.




The Clinical Journal


Book Description




French's Index of Differential Diagnosis An A-Z 1


Book Description

First published in 1912, French's Index of Differential Diagnosis helps clinicians in the differential diagnosis of any condition which may be seen in hospital or general practice. Arranged alphabetically by symptom, the text helps readers identify each presentation, describes the different diagnoses that it could represent, and explains the tests




Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction


Book Description

In the past two decades a number of studies have shown that abnormalities in the function and structure of coronary microcirculation can be detected in several cardiovascular diseases. On the basis of the clinical setting in which it occurs, coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) can be classified into four types: CMD in the absence of any other cardiac disease; CMD in myocardial diseases; CMD in obstructive epicardial coronary artery disease; and iatrogenic CMD. In some instances CMD represents an epiphenomenon, whereas in others it represents an important marker of risk or may contribute to the pathogenesis of myocardial ischemia, thus becoming a possible therapeutic target. This book provides an update on coronary physiology and a systematic assessment of microvascular abnormalities in cardiovascular diseases, in the hope that it will assist clinicians in prevention, detection and management of CMD in their everyday activity.




Clinical Epidemiology


Book Description

Now in its Fifth Edition, Clinical Epidemiology: The Essentials is a comprehensive, concise, and clinically oriented introduction to the subject of epidemiology. Written by expert educators, this text introduces students to the principles of evidence-based medicine that will help them develop and apply methods of clinical observation in order to form accurate conclusions. The Fifth Edition includes more complete coverage of systematic reviews and knowledge management, as well as other key topics such as abnormality, diagnosis, frequency and risk, prognosis, treatment, prevention, chance, studying cases and cause.




Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule


Book Description

In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.




Transforming Clinical Research in the United States


Book Description

An ideal health care system relies on efficiently generating timely, accurate evidence to deliver on its promise of diminishing the divide between clinical practice and research. There are growing indications, however, that the current health care system and the clinical research that guides medical decisions in the United States falls far short of this vision. The process of generating medical evidence through clinical trials in the United States is expensive and lengthy, includes a number of regulatory hurdles, and is based on a limited infrastructure. The link between clinical research and medical progress is also frequently misunderstood or unsupported by both patients and providers. The focus of clinical research changes as diseases emerge and new treatments create cures for old conditions. As diseases evolve, the ultimate goal remains to speed new and improved medical treatments to patients throughout the world. To keep pace with rapidly changing health care demands, clinical research resources need to be organized and on hand to address the numerous health care questions that continually emerge. Improving the overall capacity of the clinical research enterprise will depend on ensuring that there is an adequate infrastructure in place to support the investigators who conduct research, the patients with real diseases who volunteer to participate in experimental research, and the institutions that organize and carry out the trials. To address these issues and better understand the current state of clinical research in the United States, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation held a 2-day workshop entitled Transforming Clinical Research in the United States. The workshop, summarized in this volume, laid the foundation for a broader initiative of the Forum addressing different aspects of clinical research. Future Forum plans include further examining regulatory, administrative, and structural barriers to the effective conduct of clinical research; developing a vision for a stable, continuously funded clinical research infrastructure in the United States; and considering strategies and collaborative activities to facilitate more robust public engagement in the clinical research enterprise.




The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi


Book Description

In the half-century since his death, the Hungarian analyst S ndor Ferenczi has amassed an influential following within the psychoanalytic community. During his lifetime Ferenczi, a respected associate and intimate of Freud, unleashed widely disputed ideas that influenced greatly the evolution of modern psychoanalytic technique and practice. In a sequence of short, condensed entries, S ndor Ferenczi's Diary records self-critical reflections on conventional theory--as well as criticisms of Ferenczi's own experiments with technique--and his obstinate struggle to divest himself and psychoanalysis of professional hypocrisy. From these pages emerges a hitherto unheard voice, speaking to his heirs with startling candor and forceful originality--a voice that still resonates in the continuing debates over the nature of the relationship in psychoanalytic practice.