Women physicians as healthcare leaders: a qualitative study.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-representation of women physicians in clinical leadership by examining the issue from their perspective. Design/methodology/approach - The authors used large group engagement methods to explore the experiences and perceptions of women physicians. In order to capture common themes across this group as a whole, participants were selected using purposeful sampling.

The Physician Quality Improvement Initiative: Engaging Physicians in Quality Improvement, Patient Safety, Accountability and their Provision of High-Quality Patient Care.

University Health Network has been working to become a high-reliability organization, with a focus on safe, quality patient care. In response, the Medical Affairs Department has implemented several strategic initiatives to drive accountability, quality improvement and engagement with our physician population. One of these initiatives, the Physician Quality Improvement Initiative (PQII) is a physician-led project designed to provide active medical staff, in collaboration with their physician department chiefs, a comprehensive approach to focused and practical quality improvement in their practice.

Understanding practice: factors that influence physician hand hygiene compliance.

Objective: To identify the behavioral determinants--both barriers and enablers--that may impact physician hand hygiene compliance.

Design: A qualitative study involving semistructured key informant interviews with staff physicians and residents.

Setting: An urban, 1,100-bed multisite tertiary care Canadian hospital.

Improving physician hand hygiene compliance using behavioural theories: a study protocol.

Background: Healthcare-associated infections affect 10% of patients in Canadian acute-care hospitals and are significant and preventable causes of morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients. Hand hygiene is among the simplest and most effective preventive measures to reduce these infections. However, compliance with hand hygiene among healthcare workers, specifically among physicians, is consistently suboptimal.

Developing a physician engagement agreement at The Ottawa Hospital: a collaborative approach.

The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) is focused on providing safe, high-quality care to its patients. TOH has identified physician engagement as a critical factor for improving the quality of care they provide. The physician engagement strategy developed at TOH involved a qualitative inquiry into the impediments and facilitators of engagement.

Implementation of an integrated peri-operative quality management program at the Ottawa Hospital.

The 2004 Canadian Adverse Events Study estimated up to 23,750 potentially preventable in-hospital deaths occur annually; 51.4% of adverse events occurred with surgical care delivery. An integrated peri-operative quality management program has been implemented at The Ottawa Hospital using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP).

Using prospective clinical surveillance to identify adverse events in hospital.

BACKGROUND To improve patient safety, organisations must systematically measure avoidable harms. Clinical surveillance-consisting of prospective case finding and peer review-could improve identification of adverse events (AEs), preventable AEs and potential AEs. The authors sought to describe and compare findings of clinical surveillance on four clinical services in an academic hospital.

Giant cell reparative granuloma of the temporal bone treated with calcitonin.

Objective: A case report of a giant cell reparative granuloma involving the temporal bone successfully treated with calcitonin.

Study Design: Case report.

Setting: Teaching hospital, tertiary referral center.

Implementing a policy for practitioners infected with blood-borne pathogens.

Healthcare practitioners infected with blood-borne pathogens may pose a risk to patients. There is disagreement about how to best protect the health of patients without unjustifiably restricting the autonomy of infected practitioners. There are no accepted national standards to guide Canadian hospitals in policy development.

Ottawa Hospital Patient Safety Study: incidence and timing of adverse events in patients admitted to a Canadian teaching hospital.

Background: Adverse events are poor patient outcomes that are due to medical care. Studies of hospital patients have demonstrated that adverse events are common, but few data describe the timing of them in relation to hospital admission. We evaluated characteristics of adverse events affecting patients admitted to a Canadian teaching hospital, paying particular attention to timing.