Identifying Strategies to Decrease Overtime, Absenteeism and Agency Use: Insights from Healthcare Leaders.

Introduction: Working overtime, absenteeism and agency use can negatively impact working environments, the health of staff and patient outcomes, and increase healthcare costs. The purpose of this study was to explore how healthcare leaders in Ontario hospitals implement and sustain best practices that advance workforce stability within their organization.

Methods: Qualitative study design using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis.

The journey toward high performance and excellent quality.

Signalling the importance of healthcare quality and quality improvement plans in Ontario, the province's Excellent Care for all act requires all hospitals to publish quality improvement plans, conduct regular patient and staff surveys, and forge a clear link between hospital CEO compensation and quality improvement. The act also clarifies and strengthens links between evidence and quality of care. The act is an important step toward Ontario's becoming a high-performing healthcare system.

What Internet services would patients like from hospitals during an epidemic? Lessons from the SARS outbreak in Toronto.

Background: International health organizations and officials are bracing for a pandemic. Although the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto did not reach such a level, it created a unique opportunity to identify the optimal use of the Internet to promote communication with the public and to preserve health services during an epidemic.

Objective: The aim of the study was to explore patients' attitudes regarding the health services that might be provided through the Internet to supplement those traditionally available in the event of a future mass emergency situation.

Collateral damage: the unforeseen effects of emergency outbreak policies.

The 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome took the province of Ontario, Canada, by surprise. A lack of planning and the decentralised nature of the health-care system meant that disruptive control measures had to be put in place to control the outbreak. Several of the control strategies were difficult to implement and resulted in considerable confusion, fear, and costs.

Hospitals in a globalized world: a view from Canada.

Globalization is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that has already influenced the way hospitals operate and will increasingly impact the healthcare landscape and patients' experience worldwide. This paper briefly analyzes the direct and indirect effects of globalization on healthcare systems and services, mainly focusing on the experience of academic health sciences centres. Building their analysis on the belief that globalization is neither negative nor positive in itself, the authors compare alternative definitions of globalization, suggest possible ways in which it could impact health systems, examine how the role of large teaching and research institutions could evolve over the next decade or so, and put forward some fundamental questions faced by healthcare institutions.

Nursing Best Practice Guidelines: a gift for advancing professional practice in every environment.

How patients experience out healthcare system is driven to a large extent by the excellence and consistency of standards in nursing practice. Best Practice Guidelines offer a bridge, that combined with organizational and professional commitment, can facilitate the goal of supporting knowledge workers.