Personality and Lung Function in Older Adults.

Objectives: Lung disease is a leading cause of disability and death among older adults. We examine whether personality traits are associated with lung function and shortness of breath (dyspnea) in a national cohort with and without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Method: Participants (N = 12,670) from the Health and Retirement Study were tested for peak expiratory flow (PEF) and completed measures of personality, health behaviors, and a medical history.

Inspiratory muscle strength training improves weaning outcome in failure to wean patients: a randomized trial.

Introduction: Most patients are readily liberated from mechanical ventilation (MV) support, however, 10% - 15% of patients experience failure to wean (FTW). FTW patients account for approximately 40% of all MV days and have significantly worse clinical outcomes. MV induced inspiratory muscle weakness has been implicated as a contributor to FTW and recent work has documented inspiratory muscle weakness in humans supported with MV.

Nature and causes of clinically significant medication errors in a tertiary care hospital.

Purpose: Medication errors identified through solicited error reports in general medicine and specialty units of a major tertiary care teaching hospital were studied to identify prevalent patterns and causes.

Methods: Medication error reports by a multidisciplinary team of eight clinicians at adult medical and surgical, hematology and oncology, bone marrow transplantation, and medical and cardiac intensive care units were collected prospectively over a three-month period. The reports were validated in terms of clinical significance, causality, and true presence of an error by two independent reviewers.