The Role of the Medical Director in Ontario Long-Term Care Homes: Impact of COVID-19.

Objectives: The pandemic has uncovered a broad lack of understanding of the role of the Medical Director in Canadian Long-Term Care (LTC) Homes. Our objectives were to identify the current demographics and practices of LTC Medical Directors, discover how the pandemic affected their practice habits, and inform the content of the Ontario Long-Term Care Clinicians Medical Director Course, to ensure that Medical Directors have the requisite knowledge of the responsibilities of their role.

Design: Email survey.

Achieving competency in wound care: an innovative training module using the long-term care setting.

Structured academic teaching on wound care was developed, based on the long-term care (LTC) setting, with the goal of ensuring that postgraduate family medicine residents attain competency in assessment and treatment of wounds and pressure ulcers (PUs). The curriculum for the 1-month learning module was based on clinical practice guidelines for the prevention, assessment, and treatment of PUs and wounds. The learning techniques used include a learners' needs assessment, a small-group didactic session, interdisciplinary bedside case discussions and a toolkit.

Assessing the quality of care for dying patients from the bereaved relatives' perspective: further validation of "Evaluating care and health outcomes--for the dying".

Context: Evaluating Care and Health Outcomes-for the Dying (ECHO-D) is a post-bereavement questionnaire that assesses quality of care for the dying and is linked with the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP).

Objectives: To further assess the validity and reliability of the ECHO-D, namely the construct validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of key composite scales.

Methods: Self-completion questionnaires were mailed to 778 next-of-kin of consecutive deceased patients who had died an "expected" cancer death in a hospice or acute tertiary hospital.

Assessing quality of care for the dying: the development and initial validation of a postal self-completion questionnaire for bereaved relatives.

Background: Evaluating 'quality of care for the dying' from the patients' perspective has practical and ethical difficulties: an alternative is to use bereaved relatives' views as 'proxy' measures. Currently, within the United Kingdom, there is no validated instrument which specifically examines quality of care in the last days of life or the impact of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) for the Dying Patient.

Aim: To develop and validate a questionnaire for use with bereaved relatives assessing the quality of care for patients and families in the last days of life and the immediate period after the bereavement.

Does the timing of comorbidity affect colorectal cancer survival? A population based study.

Objectives: Comorbid conditions in colorectal cancer patients can influence both clinical eligibility for treatment and survival. We aimed to evaluate the effect of comorbidity on 1 year survival from colorectal cancer, and to assess whether this effect varied with the timing of the comorbidity in relation to the cancer diagnosis.

Study Design And Setting: A population based cohort of 29,563 colorectal cancer patients diagnosed between 1997 and 2004 in the North West of England was evaluated.

Safe medication swallowing in Dysphagia: a collaborative improvement project.

Episodes of choking during medication administration to patients with dysphagia prompted a chart audit and caregiver interview to identify system problems that allowed inappropriate drug administration to occur. Sixty elderly patients residing on two patient care areas in a 500-bed complex continuing care facility were studied. The audit explored the actual nursing medication administration methods and compared this to the information obtained from various communication tools including instructions that appeared on the medication administration record (MAR), the current diet order, the recommendations of the speech-language pathologist (SLP) and comments on the nursing care plan.

Junior medical students' notions of a 'good doctor' and related expectations: a mixed methods study.

Objective: To explore junior medical students' notions of a 'good doctor', given their ideas about: success in Year 1, house jobs, and their attraction to medicine.

Methods: Study participants were junior medical students (1999 and 2001 entry cohorts studied thrice and twice, respectively) and prospective students of the University of Liverpool's 5-year, problem-based, community-orientated curriculum. Data collection and analysis used a 'mixed methods' approach, cross-sectional design, and brief questionnaire surveys.

Problem-based learning at the receiving end: a 'mixed methods' study of junior medical students' perspectives.

Unlabelled: Qualitative insights about students' personal experience of inconsistencies in implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) might help refocus expert discourse about good practice.

Aim: This study explored how junior medical students conceptualize: PBL; good tutoring; and less effective sessions.

Methods: Participants comprised junior medical students in Liverpool 5-year problem-based, community-orientated curriculum.

Breast carcinoma survival in Europe and the United States.

Background: Breast carcinoma survival rates were found to be higher in the U.S. than in Europe.