Graft preservation in heart transplantation: current approaches.

Heart transplantation (HTx) represents the current best surgical treatment for patients affected by end-stage heart failure. However, with the improvement of medical and interventional therapies, the population of HTx candidates is increasingly old and at high-risk for mortality and complications. Moreover, the use of "extended donor criteria" to deal with the shortage of donors could increase the risk of worse outcomes after HTx.

Knowledge, practice and faith on Total Quality Management principles among workers in the Health Care System: evidence from an Italian investigation.

Background: The implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles in the sanitary field, in order to be effective, requires a radical change in management practice as well as the organizational culture and its philosophy. The need to monitor such a transformation emerges too.

Objectives: This study surveys how well TQM principles are known and understood by health care professionals from the employees' point of view and the factors affecting it.

Burnout syndrome in the helping professions.

Burnout can be defined as a long-term reaction to occupational stress which involves, particularly, the helping professions. The main aim of this study was the assessment of burnout in a sample of professional and voluntary health care workers and comparison of the two samples on scores from the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Analysis suggests a significant difference in mean scores for Emotional Exhaustion of volunteers vs professional workers.