Introduction:  The Shared Resource Laboratory (SRL) model recently described for research activities would also appear to be highly suitable for diagnostic services. Using modern SRL design criteria and benchmarks, the aim of our study was to verify whether the consolidation of a diagnostic cytofluorimetric activity could improve the overall service. ...

BACKGROUND: Poisons information is accessed around the clock in the British Isles from six centres of which two are in Ireland at Dublin and Belfast accompanied by consultant toxicologist advisory service. The numbers of calls in Ireland are down to about 40 per day due to easy access to online ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Despite the fact that Ethiopia has scale up antiretroviral treatment (ART) program, little is known about the patient satisfaction with ART monitoring laboratory services in health facilities. We therefore aimed to assess patient satisfaction with laboratory services at ART clinics in public hospitals. METHODS: Hospital based, descriptive cross ...

The microsporidium Pseudoloma neurophilia represents a considerable challenge for laboratory zebrafish (Danio rerio) facilities. In 2010, P. neurophilia infections were diagnosed in zebrafish from 74% of the facilities that submitted fish to the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) pathology service, and this organism remains the most commonly diagnosed pathogen in ...

Australia has a widely dispersed network of public sexual health services that test large numbers of people from high prevalence populations for genital Chlamydia trachomatis infection. These populations include young sexually active heterosexuals, men who have sex with men, sex workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The Australian ...

Leg ulcers are common and costly to treat, and the quality of care provided to patients with this condition varies widely across the UK. The introduction of specialized community-based leg ulcer clinics in Gloucestershire has been associated with increased ulcer healing rates and decreased rates of ulcer recurrence, but this ...

This study aimed to construct a hierarchy of motives linked to doping behaviors. Between 2000 and 2005, calls to a national antidoping phone-help service by 115 cyclists, 203 bodybuilders, and 40 footballers were analyzed. The results showed that the main motives were preserving health for cyclists, increasing muscular strength for ...

The question of whether those patients who privately purchase treatments which are not available on the National Health Service should, as a consequence, lose entitlement to free care for their condition has proved highly controversial in the United Kingdom. This article considers the debate upon this issue. It focuses in ...

There are approximately 5,000 people with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) in the United Kingdom. Since 2002, EB services in England have been nationally funded by the National Commissioning Group, which also funds the National Diagnostic EB Laboratory. This provides a comprehensive multidisciplinary service including relevant medical and nursing specialists, therapists, investigations, ...

Toll-free telephone quitlines are successful alternatives to direct clinician contact. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services created a national quitline number, 1-800-QUIT-NOW. This enabled states without quitlines to establish them, giving free access to cessation services to every smoker in the U.S. It also created a ...

The practices and systems of mental health in Latin America and the Caribbean are heterogeneous and are connected to dissociation between national macro systems and the complex quotidian that occurs in the daily attention of mental pathologies. The health care experiences in mental health are diverse and go back to ...

Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared ...

Penelope Enarson and colleagues describe the development, scale-up, and achievements of a national pneumonia program in Malawi, which is based on a successful anti-tuberculosis service delivery model.

This pilot study provides a snapshot of the use of seclusion within an acute care mental health unit in Queensland, Australia. The study collected baseline data against which practice reform aimed at reducing its use could be gauged. A mixed methodology was adopted, undertaking retrospective chart reviews, collecting qualitative survey ...

NICE has existed for 10 years. During this period, its methodological approach to developing guidance and assessing the value (cost-effectiveness) of healthcare interventions has received considerable national and international interest. At the same time, individual decisions have generated enormous controversy. This 10th anniversary provides an opportunity to look back at ...

INHS Technical Report prepared for Shawnee National Forest, USDA-Forest Service

INHS Technical Report prepared for US Forest Service, Shawnee National Forest, Murphysboro District

This investigation is aimed at providing information about structural and organizational characteristics of smoking cessation services (SCS) set up within the Italian National Health Service. Local health units and hospitals are the main institutions connected with SCS which are mainly located within the Department of Drug Addiction and the Department ...

This report presents a detailed account of a major educational initiative in the British health service, the organisation with the largest workforce in Europe. The initiative was to set up a ‘university for the National Health Service’, an aspiration that gave birth to ‘NHSU’. Work began in 2001, but the ...

OBJECTIVE: To identify search and rescue (SAR) trends in US National Park Service (NPS) units. METHODS: A retrospective review of the US National Park Service Annual Search and Rescue Reports from 1992 to 2007 and the SAR statistics for all NPS units in 2005. RESULTS: From 1992 to 2007 there ...

BACKGROUND: National parks are popular travel destinations worldwide. Unfortunately, negative health experiences can and do occur during travel in national parks. This study investigated search and rescue (SAR) trends associated with recreational travel in US National Park Service (NPS) units. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted of the Annual US ...

Noting that the U.S. is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) declares that the nation therefore "has a special responsibility to lead the way on emission controls and new investment in green technologies that can be adopted worldwide." The union has pledged to do ...

This article presents the findings of one component of an evaluation of the national policy for free deliveries and caesareans in Senegal. The policy was introduced in 2005 in five more deprived regions of the country. It aimed to reduce the financial barriers to using maternity services and to increase ...

BACKGROUND: Injuries are a public health problem affecting traveling populations such as tourists visiting National Parks. This study investigates the distribution of visitor fatalities in US National Park Service (NPS) units and identifies the predeath activities and contributing factors associated with them. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted of visitor ...

The Minimum Data Set (MDS) for UK specialist palliative care services was developed in 1995 to provide annual data on palliative care services. Data collected is used for local and national purposes including service management, monitoring and audit, the commissioning of services and the development of national policy. The emergence ...

BACKGROUND: In May 2005 the Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association (OAA) and Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland published a document entitled Guidelines for Obstetric Anaesthetic Services. This survey investigated if standards recommended in this document were being met more than six months after its release. METHODS: An OAA-approved questionnaire ...

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, authors must address environmental impacts of various anthropogenic actions on wildlife. One such impact of increasing awareness and concern is effect noise on wildlife, both during construction and operation of the project. However, biologists often have difficulty in understanding the fundamentals of acoustics and ...

BACKGROUND: New laser and surgical techniques have had a significant effect on glaucoma therapy. A precise understanding of how these developments are affecting overall glaucoma management is fundamental to health services planning. The objective of this study was to synthesize Canadian national and provincial data regarding glaucoma laser and surgical ...

BACKGROUND: Understanding the epidemiology of human Mycobacterium bovis tuberculosis (TB) in the United States is imperative; this disease can be foodborne or airborne, and current US control strategies are focused on TB due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis and airborne transmission. The National TB Genotyping Service's work has allowed systematic identification of ...

Geographic disbursement, unsecured environments, and the concentration and commingling of agricultural products make agriculture a vulnerable target for a terrorist attack. To counter an act of agroterrorism, efforts are needed at the organism level, the farm level, the agricultural sector level, and the national level. Producers and the measures they ...

There are many challenges in providing genitourinary medicine services in prison. A review of current service arrangements is overdue. Developing a national standard for sexual health in prison must be a priority. Clinical governance arrangements underpinned by better health informatics and reliable measures of outcomes are key in developing this ...

The introduction of payments for environmental services (PES) offers an opportunity for traditional and indigenous populations to be compensated for contributing to carbon sequestration in meeting the challenge of ameliorating global warming. As one mechanism among several for promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, pro-poor PES initiatives could eventually be ...

In 1995, a National Health Insurance Law (NHIL) was enacted in Israel. It specified a mandatory package of services to be provided by the four competing private non-profit sickness funds, and secured the financing of that provision. This review discusses the main issues associated with financing of--and the sickness funds' ...

It is widely assumed that the economic and social costs that unemployment gives rise to must be exacerbated where joblessness is concentrated within families. This hypothesis is tested in this paper. Specifically, data from the first five waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA), a ...

AIM: The aim of this study was to examine the separate and combined effects of several factors deemed important in determining peaking in the Athens Olympic swimming competition. METHODS: Data on 301 Olympic swimmers, who competed in 424 events, were used to analyze the relative swimming performance gain (RSPG%: the ...

BACKGROUND: This paper presents the methods and findings of a survey of current service configuration in tuberculosis screening, treatment and prevention in England and Wales, which was conducted as part of the development of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on tuberculosis for the country. METHODS: A ...

The Clean Air Act establishes New Source Review (NSR) programs that apply to construction or modification of major stationary sources. In 2002 and 2003, EPA revised its rules to narrow NSR's coverage of renovations. Congress mandated a National Research Council study of the revisions' impacts. In that study, we used ...

This article provides an overview of international, national, and local policy initiatives that support the clinical and programmatic changes being championed in psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery. California, with the 6th largest economy in the world and one of the largest public mental health systems, has become a leader both nationally ...

OBJECTIVE: To identify the emergency medical service (EMS) workload and trends associated with search and rescue (SAR) operations in Utah's National Park Service (NPS) units. METHODS: Data for this study were collected from the Annual Emergency Medical Services Report and the Annual Search and Rescue Report for National Park Service ...

The great majority of patients starting renal replacement therapy (RRT) have progressed from earlier stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD): most could therefore have been identified earlier, with possible improvements in outcome. Although end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is relatively rare, treatment with dialysis or transplantation is very expensive, currently costing ...

OBJECTIVES: To describe the prospects, achievements, challenges and opportunities for implementing intermittent preventive treatment for malaria in pregnancy (IPTp) in Tanzania in light of national antenatal care (ANC) guidelines and ability of service providers to comply with them. METHODS: In-depth interviews were made with national level malaria control officers in ...

BACKGROUND: The TB operational guideline (the deskguide) is a detailed action guide for county TB doctors aiming to improve the quality of DOTS, while the China national TB policy guide is a guide to TB control that is comprehensive but lacks operational usability for frontline TB doctors. This study reports ...

BACKGROUND: The National Health Service (NHS) was tasked in 2001 with developing service provision to prevent falls in older people. We carried out a national survey to provide a description of health and social care funded UK fallers services, and to benchmark progress against current practice guidelines. METHODS: Cascade approach ...

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, the primary basis of the present Law of Armed Conflict, are primarily a reaction to past wars, including World War II. Since 1949, armed conflict had evolved from large armies controlled by nations to fighting by nations, groups, and organization, and are fought both nationally ...

In surveys of well-being, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands emerge as particularly happy while nations like Germany and Italy report lower levels of happiness. But are these kinds of findings credible? This paper provides some evidence that the answer is yes. Using data on 16 countries, it shows ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine if the school-entry hearing screening (SEHS) programme continues to make a useful contribution to the identification of childhood hearing impairment in the light of the recent implementation of universal newborn hearing screening, and thereby to inform future policy development. DESIGN: Postal questionnaire survey to determine current implementation ...

This paper considers the new financial infrastructure of the National Health Service and provides a resource for orthopaedic surgeons. We describe the importance of accurate documentation and data collection for National Health Service hospital Trust finances and league tables, and support our discussion with examples drawn from our local audit ...

Clinician-rated measures are in extensive use as routine outcome measures in child and adolescent mental health services. We investigated cross-national differences and inter-rater reliability of the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents (HoNOSCA), the Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS) and the Global Assessment of Psychosocial Disability ...

Concern over impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition to ecosystems in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, has prompted the National Park Service, the State of Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Environmental Protection Agency, and interested stakeholders to collaborate in the Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative, a process to ...

Concern has been expressed about the applicability of the findings of the International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (ISAT) with respect to the relative effects on outcome of coiling and clipping. It has been suggested that the findings of the National Study of Subarachnoid Haemorrhage may have greater relevance for neurosurgical practice. ...