Rating recommendations for consumers about patient safety: sense, common sense, or nonsense?

Background: Although many organizations offer advice about the consumer's role in improving patient safety, little is known about these recommendations.

Methods: The Internet and medical literature were searched to identify patient safety recommendations for consumers. Recommendations were classified by type and tabulated by frequency.

Process of care failures in breast cancer diagnosis.

Background: Process of care failures may contribute to diagnostic errors in breast cancer care.

Objective: To identify patient- and provider-related process of care failures in breast cancer screening and follow-up in a non-claims-based cohort.

Design: Retrospective chart review of a cohort of patients referred to two Boston cancer centers with new breast cancer diagnoses between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2004.

Hospital use of antipsychotic drugs: polytherapy.

Objective: Growing acceptance of new psychotropic drugs encouraged a survey of current use of antipsychotic drugs alone and in combinations, with comparisons with previous findings.

Method: Records from a random sample of McLean Hospital (Belmont, Mass) inpatients treated with an antipsychotic from March to May 2004 were reviewed for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, discharge diagnosis; all current psychotropic drug treatments; initial, peak, and final chlorpromazine-equivalent milligram-per-day dose of antipsychotics (APD); initial, peak, and final lithium-equivalent dose (milligram per day) of mood stabilizers (MS); weight change; clinical status at admission and discharge; and days of hospitalization.

Results: In the 305 inpatients sampled (n = 184 women, 60.

Use of combinations of antipsychotics: McLean Hospital inpatients, 2002.

Background: The empirical use of combinations of antipsychotic agents appears to be increasing with little research support for the relative efficacy, safety or cost-effectiveness of this practice. Such treatment was evaluated in hospitalized psychiatric patients.

Methods: Samples of consecutive inpatients treated with > or = 2 ('polytherapy') vs 1 antipsychotic ('monotherapy') were matched on age, sex, diagnosis and admission clinical ratings, and these groups were compared on total daily chlorpromazine-equivalent doses, days in hospital, and changes in clinical ratings between admission and discharge.