Publications by authors named "Allen R Huang"
Background: Medical learners develop a more positive attitude toward Interprofessional Collaboration (IPC) following Interprofessional Education (IPE) programs. However, IPE is not standardized, and the most effective teaching tool is unclear. The purpose of our study was to develop an IPE teaching tool for medical residents during an inpatient geriatric medicine rotation at an academic hospital, evaluate and explore the impact of the program on resident attitudes towards teamwork, and identify barriers and facilitators to interprofessional collaboration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Scalable deprescribing interventions may reduce polypharmacy and the use of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs); however, few studies have been large enough to evaluate the impact that deprescribing may have on adverse drug events (ADEs).
Objective: To evaluate the effect of an electronic deprescribing decision support tool on ADEs after hospital discharge among older adults with polypharmacy.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a cluster randomized clinical trial of older (≥65 years) hospitalized patients with an expected survival of more than 3 months who were admitted to 1 of 11 acute care hospitals in Canada from August 22, 2017, to January 13, 2020.
Background: Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is an immune mediated inflammatory disease of medium and large arteries which afflicts older people. The classical presentation features include: headache, visual disturbances, and jaw claudication. Patients diagnosed with GCA have also been observed to be at higher risk for the subsequent development of strokes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- A time-motion study was conducted to evaluate the workflow of internal medicine residents and assess the feasibility of using a mobile tool for data collection.
- The study recorded 17,714 events over 516 hours, categorizing activities such as direct patient care (22%) and communication (19%), with only 9% of time spent directly with patients.
- The findings indicate that tracking resident workflow is practical and will help measure the impact of future changes in residency training, highlighting that education accounted for 13% of on-duty time.
Article Synopsis
- Medical residents' long duty hours have been under scrutiny since the 1980s, leading to interest in how they spend their time during shifts, prompting the need for time-motion studies for better understanding.
- The study reviewed literature on time-motion research for internal medicine residents to determine how their time is allocated across different tasks and analyze the impact of ACGME-mandated duty hour changes in North America.
- Findings showed residents spent a significant portion of time (41.8%) on patient care, with slight shifts in task allocation following ACGME changes, but overall, there was a lack of consistent data and limited impact on how time was spent on tasks.
Background: Cholinesterase inhibitors are used to treat the symptoms of dementia and can theoretically cause bradycardia. Previous studies suggest that patients taking these medications have an increased risk of undergoing pacemaker insertion. Since these drugs have a marginal impact on patient outcomes, it might be preferable to change drug treatment rather than implant a pacemaker.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) provides clinicians with detailed information on a patient's physiological age and may aid in the treatment decision-making process. Conducting a CGA, however, is time-consuming, requiring extensive data collection and, in some cases, the involvement of multiple healthcare professionals. The CGA is also not specifically targeted towards assessing patients presenting with neoplastic pathologies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Care of the older adult in the acute care hospital is becoming more challenging. Patients 65 years and older account for 35% of hospital discharges and 45% of hospital days. Up to one-third of the hospitalized frail elderly loses independent functioning in one or more activities of daily living as a result of the 'hostile environment' that is present in the acute hospitals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople are living to older age. Demographic pressures are driving change. Opiate analgesics are the most powerful known pain relievers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adverse drug events are responsible for up to 7% of all admissions to acute care hospitals. At least 58% of these are preventable, resulting from incomplete drug information, prescribing or dispensing errors, and overuse or underuse of medications. Effective implementation of medication reconciliation is considered essential to reduce preventable adverse drug events occurring at transitions between community and hospital care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople are living to older age. Falls constitute a leading cause of injuries, hospitalization and deaths among the elderly. Older people fall more often for a variety of reasons: alterations in physiology and physical functioning, and the use (and misuse) of medications needed to manage their multiple conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The optimal patient selection of frail elderly persons undergoing rehabilitation in Geriatric Day Hospital (GDH) programs remains uncertain. This study was done to identify potential predictors of rehabilitation outcomes for these patients.
Methods: This study is a retrospective cohort analysis of patients admitted to the rehabilitation program of our GDH, in Montreal, Canada, over a five year period.