A pediatric learning experience: respite care for families with children with special needs.

Respite care provides temporary relief from the demands of constant caregiving for primary care givers. While better known in geriatrics, respite care can also promote family well-being and enhance the coping abilities of parents with children with special needs. The authors describe how a respite care service and a department of nursing collaborated to provide respite care to parents of children with special needs, thus providing a much needed service in the community as well as a unique clinical experience for nursing students.

Impact of a migraine management program on improving health outcomes.

The goals of this program were to evaluate the effectiveness of migraine disease management techniques in improving patient satisfaction with migraine care, decreasing the frequency and severity of headaches and migraine-associated disability, increasing the effectiveness of migraine treatment and work productivity, improving physician diagnosis and treatment of migraine, and ultimately determining the program's impact on healthcare resource utilization. A prospective observational study was undertaken. This prospective Migraine Management Program (MMP) used active patient and healthcare physician-based disease management resources, tools, and techniques.

Cidofovir in the treatment of cytomegaloviral disease.

Objective: To review the clinical pharmacology and microbiology of cidofovir in the therapy of cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease.

Data Sources: Pertinent literature was identified via a MEDLINE search (October 1986-February 1997), and data from abstracts presented at recent scientific meetings were also included; unpublished information was provided by the manufacturer.

Study Selection: Antiviral activity data were included if widely accepted methodology was used.

Automated antibiotic susceptibility testing: comparative evaluation of four commercial systems and present state.

Automation of AST has come quite some way and is here to stay. In particular, fully automated, "hands off" instruments have great appeal to laboratories with a limited number of well-trained and experienced clinical microbiology personnel. None of the evaluated instruments is perfect, but then neither are the standard or reference techniques.