Antibiotic Review Kit for Hospitals (ARK-Hospital): study protocol for a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised controlled trial.

Background: To ensure patients continue to get early access to antibiotics at admission, while also safely reducing antibiotic use in hospitals, one needs to target the continued need for antibiotics as more diagnostic information becomes available. UK Department of Health guidance promotes an initiative called 'Start Smart then Focus': early effective antibiotics followed by active 'review and revision' 24-72 h later. However in 2017, < 10% of antibiotic prescriptions were discontinued at review, despite studies suggesting that 20-30% of prescriptions could be stopped safely.

Two-epoch cross-sectional case record review protocol comparing quality of care of hospital emergency admissions at weekends versus weekdays.

Introduction: The mortality associated with weekend admission to hospital (the 'weekend effect') has for many years been attributed to deficiencies in quality of hospital care, often assumed to be due to suboptimal senior medical staffing at weekends. This protocol describes a case note review to determine whether there are differences in care quality for emergency admissions (EAs) to hospital at weekends compared with weekdays, and whether the difference has reduced over time as health policies have changed to promote 7-day services.

Methods And Analysis: Cross-sectional two-epoch case record review of 20 acute hospital Trusts in England.

Weekend specialist intensity and admission mortality in acute hospital trusts in England: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Increased mortality rates associated with weekend hospital admission (the so-called weekend effect) have been attributed to suboptimum staffing levels of specialist consultants. However, evidence for a causal association is elusive, and the magnitude of the weekend specialist deficit remains unquantified. This uncertainty could hamper efforts by national health systems to introduce 7 day health services.

Acute medicine journal survey.

A short survey was circulated by email to members of the Society for Acute Medicine receiving the Acute Medicine journal in January 2010. Responses to the questions relating to journal content and layout are summarised in the figures below (Figures 1-5). There were 75 responses in total, representing just over 10% of those surveyed.

'Setting new standards for acute care' the society for acute medicine international conference, 1-2 october 2007.

The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre provided the venue for the first truly International meeting of the Society for Acute Medicine in early October. Almost 600 delegates were treated to some unseasonal Glasgow sunshine and traditional Scottish hospitality, as they enjoyed the varied programme put together by Mike Jones, Derek Bell and Liz Myers. The long distance that the Society has travelled in the past 7 years to reach this size was emphasised repeatedly over the two days; in his inaugural address to the society as incoming President, Dr Rhid Dowdle told us that SAM is now playing in a much bigger league than ever before, but cautioned that the speciality still has a way to go to reach the 'top division'.