Hurricane preparedness among healthcare workers in St James.

Objective: To assess the preparedness of health workers in St James, Jamaica, to respond to natural disasters.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on a 25% quota sample of hospital and health department staff in St James in 2005 (n = 307). Awareness of and attitudes to disaster management policies, plans and training and how these influenced their response in Hurricane Ivan were evaluated Statistical package for the Social Science 11.

[The value of mobile intensive care unit (MICU): does it remain to be proven?].

Recent international guidelines about emergency situations (ILCOR / ERC) pointed to the need of the whole "chain of survival". ALS, Advanced Life Support (the last and "medical" part of the chain ) is important and influences survival rate. If no doubt exists about "what" and "when" to do in such situations, there is no consensus in industrialized countries about "who" should be in charge of such out-of-hospital acute diagnosis and treatment: emergency physicians, emergency nurses, emergency medical technicians (EMT), other "new" professionals ? .

Psychiatric inpatients' satisfaction with services: A pilot study.

Introduction: Fifty-three patients admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit in South London were interviewed to ascertain their satisfaction with services provided for them.

Method: The level of satisfaction with various aspects of treatment was evaluated using a 45-item questionnaire.

Results: Results showed that patients were generally satisfied with the staff attitudes and care, although two-thirds felt that they had not been sufficiently involved in their own treatment planning.

Integrated primary mental health care.

Mental health is increasingly being recognized as contributing significantly to the burden of disease, particularly now that the indicators have shifted from measures of mortality to measures of morbidity. Psychiatric morbidity in the community, based on community surveys, is estimated at 20 to 30% of the population. Increasingly, patients needing mental health services prefer to be in a general health care setting than in specialized centres.

Under-users of antenatal care: a comparison of non-attenders and late attenders for antenatal care, with early attenders.

Demographic, behavioural, environmental, economic and obstetric history data from the Jamaican Perinatal Morbidity and Mortality Survey were examined to identify characteristics of women who do not attend for antenatal care, or present late instead of early for care, using multiple logistic regression. Non-attenders were more likely to be teenagers, unmarried, in unions of very short duration, smokers and women who felt that friends and relatives were not supportive. Multigravid non-attenders often had short inter-pregnancy intervals and included women who had experienced a post neonatal death.