Measuring progress toward the Millennium Development Goals and the missing millions.

The 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is fast approaching, but there is very little discussion of the validity of the indicators used to measure progress. In particular, there has been little attention given to the problems that arise when assessments of progress are based on household surveys. These are inappropriate for obtaining information about the poorest of the poor.

What are the reasons for high turnover in nursing? A discussion of presumed causal factors and remedies.

Problems with high turnover in nursing and of maintaining adequate numbers of nurses to supply clinical staffing requirements have a long history and have therefore attracted a commensurate literature with time. An overview and discussion of the situation internationally, with an emphasis on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and the UK, finds that job satisfaction is often a consistent underlying determinant interacting with workplace factors and personal reasons in complex ways. Effective and adaptive retention strategies are required to meet and mitigate the problem as reasons for it may vary over time.

Risk adjustment for hospital use using social security data: cross sectional small area analysis.

Objectives: To identify demographic and socioeconomic determinants of need for acute hospital treatment at small area level. To establish whether there is a relation between poverty and use of inpatient services. To devise a risk adjustment formula for distributing public funds for hospital services using, as far as possible, variables that can be updated between censuses.