[The role of caregiver in patients at risk of difficult discharge: a needs analysis in a medical ward].

Introduction: the continuous increase in life expectancy and the large amount of elderly population the caregiver become an important figure in domiciliary assistance. He is not often prepared to fulfil this complex role, because he has a great number of unsatisfied needs. For this reason the aim of this study is to identify and analyze the caregiver's educational needs, in anticipation of frail elderly's home discharge.

Fuzzy logic applied to a Patient Classification System.

The optimization of the clinical staff resources is a very complicated task that can be supported by a set of tools called Patient Classification Systems (PCS). These methods allow the evaluation of the correct number of nurses and healthcare workers needed in order to guarantee an appropriate care level.