Prevalence of Demodex gatoi in shelter and feral cats in a southeastern region of the United States.

Background: Demodex gatoi is a contagious ectoparasite that causes pruritic dermatitis in otherwise healthy cats. The diagnosis of this mite can be difficult, and its prevalence is unknown.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to identify the prevalence of D.

Audit and feedback using the brief Decision Support Analysis Tool (DSAT-10) to evaluate nurse-standardized patient encounters.

Objective: To evaluate the brief Decision Support Analysis Tool (DSAT-10) for auditing the quality of nurse-standardized patient encounters, structuring feedback for nurses, and testing instrument reliability.

Methods: A systematic process was used to develop standardized patient scenarios, pilot-test scenarios, calibrate DSAT-10 coders, analyze taped telephone encounters using DSAT-10, and provide feedback. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using coder agreement, kappa, and intra-class correlation coefficients.

Validation of a tool to assess health practitioners' decision support and communication skills.

As patients become more involved in decisions affecting their health, it is important to monitor and improve the support clinicians provide to facilitate shared decision making. The Decision Support Analysis Tool (DSAT) was developed as a research tool to evaluate practitioners' use of decision support and related communication skills during a clinical encounter. The DSAT, consisting of six categories of decision support skills and four categories of communication skills, was tested with 34 actual transcripts of patient-physician dialogue.

The effect of decision aids on the agreement between women's and physicians' decisional conflict about hormone replacement therapy.

The aim of this secondary analysis was to compare the effects of a tailored decision aid (DA) with those of a pamphlet on the agreement between women's and physicians' decisional conflict about hormone replacement therapy (HRT). A total of 40 physicians and 184 women provided data. The agreement between women's and physicians' decisional conflict scores was measured using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

A survey of the decision-making needs of Canadians faced with complex health decisions.

Objective: To describe the decision-making needs of Canadians when faced with 'complex' health decisions characterized by balancing advantages against disadvantages. Although a national report emphasized that public confidence in the health-care system depends on support for personal knowledge and decision-making, there has been no systematic investigation of the Canadian population's decision-making needs.

Design: Cross-sectional telephone survey using random digit dialling.