Allophone immigrant women's knowledge and perceptions of epidural analgesia for labour pain: a qualitative study.

Objectives: To explore allophone immigrant women's knowledge and perceptions of epidural analgesia for labour pain, in order to identify their information needs prior to the procedure.

Design: We conducted focus groups interviews with allophone women from five different linguistic immigrant communities, with the aid of professional interpreters. Thematic analysis of focus group transcripts was carried out by all authors.

Prehospital and Emergency Care in Adult Patients with Acute Traumatic Brain Injury.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major healthcare problem and a major burden to society. The identification of a TBI can be challenging in the prehospital setting, particularly in elderly patients with unobserved falls. Errors in triage on scene cannot be ruled out based on limited clinical diagnostics.

Impact of organizational culture on preventability assessment of selected adverse events in the ICU: evaluation of morbidity and mortality conferences.

Purpose: To determine whether organizational culture is associated with preventability assessment of reported adverse events (AE) in intensive care units (ICU).

Design: Blind review of time randomly distributed case notes written in the form of structured abstracts by the nurses who participated in recently implemented morbidity and mortality conferences from December 2006 to June 2010 in a 18-bed ICU in France. Ninety-five abstracts summarizing the discussions of 95 AE involving 95 patients were reviewed by two external blinded pairs (each comprised of one senior intensivist and one psychologist).

Neurally adjusted ventilatory assist in patients recovering spontaneous breathing after acute respiratory distress syndrome: physiological evaluation.

Objective: Pressure-support ventilation is widely used during the weaning phase in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The pressure-support level is adjusted to prevent ventilator-induced lung injury while limiting the patient's work of breathing. Neurally adjusted ventilatory assist is an assist mode that applies a positive pressure proportional to the integral of the electrical activity of the diaphragm.