Enhancing the utility of virtual surgical pre-assessment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual pre-assessment was introduced for all elective and semi-urgent surgeries to maintain surgical clinical services in the authors' Trust. This mainly involved telephone pre-assessments, although occasionally video technology was used. This had to be managed and maintained at a distance with little or no training or established method.

Failure demand: a concept evaluation in UK primary care.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess failure demand as a lean concept that assists in waste analysis during quality improvement activity. The authors assess whether the concept's limited use is a missed opportunity to help us understand improvement priorities, given that a UK Government requirement for public service managers to report failure demand has been removed.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors look at the literature across the public sector and then apply the failure demand concept to the UK's primary healthcare system.

Postural stability following ambulatory regional analgesia for labor.

Background: The safety of mobilization following low-dose regional analgesia in parturients remains controversial. Previous studies have demonstrated preserved balance function despite clinically elicited sensory deficits. The aim of this study was to use the Balance Master 6.

Efficacy of securing cannulae with different taping methods.

This study compared locally available adhesive tapes and dressings in a block randomized, blinded study to determine the force required to dislodge a cannula. In the first stage of the study, various tapes and taping methods were used to secure a cannula to a polyvinylchloride (PVC) pipe. The cannula was attached to a section of a giving set which in turn was attached to a dynamic force transducer.