Combatting resistance in intensive care: the multimodal approach of the Spanish ICU "Zero Resistance" program.

This article is one of ten reviews selected from the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine 2015 and co-published as a series in Critical Care. Other articles in the series can be found online at http://ccforum.com/series/annualupdate2015.

Are Spanish primary care professionals aware of patient safety?

Background: Knowledge about safety culture improves patient safety (PS) in health-care organizations. The first contact a patient has with health care occurs at the primary level. We conducted a survey to measure patient safety culture (PSC) among primary care professionals (PCPs) of health centres (HCs) in Spain and analyzed PS dimensions that influence PSC.

Clinical effectiveness of online training in palliative care of primary care physicians.

Background: Primary care physicians (PCPs) have a major responsibility in the management of palliative patients. Online palliative care (PC) education has not been shown to have a clinical impact on patients that is equal or different to traditional training.

Objective: This study tested the clinical effectiveness of online PC education of physicians through impact on symptom control, quality of life (QOL), caregiver satisfaction, and knowledge-attitude of physicians at 18 months of the intervention.

[Social network analysis: a method to improve safety in healthcare organizations].

Patient safety depends on the culture of the healthcare organization involving relationships between professionals. This article proposes that the study of these relations should be conducted from a network perspective and using a methodology called Social Network Analysis (SNA). This methodology includes a set of mathematical constructs grounded in Graph Theory.

Reliability and concurrent validity of the Palliative Outcome Scale, the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist, and the Brief Pain Inventory.

Background: Some domains of the questionnaires used to measure symptoms and quality of life (QOL) in patients with advanced cancer seem to measure similar dimensions or constructs, so it would be useful for clinicians to demonstrate the interchangeability of equivalent domains of the questionnaires in measuring the same constructs.

Objective: This study investigated the reliability and concurrent validity of the Palliative Outcome Scale (POS), the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL), and the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), used to measure symptom control in patients with advanced cancer.

Design: This was an evaluative study.

Chemotherapy versus best supportive care for extensive small cell lung cancer.

Background: Combination chemotherapy has been the mainstay of treatment for extensive stage small celI lung cancer (SCLC) over the last 30 years even though it only gives a short prolongation in median survival time. The main goal for these patients should be palliation with the aim of improving their quality of life.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of chemotherapy in extensive SCLC compared with best supportive care (BSC) or placebo treatment.

[Adverse events in general and digestive surgery departments in Spanish hospitals].

Objective: To determine the incidence of patients with adverse events (AE) in Spanish general surgery units, describe the immediate causes of AE, identify avoidable AE, and determine the impact of these events.

Material And Method: We performed a retrospective cohort study of a randomized stratified sample of 24 hospitals. Six of the hospitals were small (fewer than 200 beds), 13 were medium-sized (between 200 and 499 beds) and five were large (500 or more beds).

[Relationship between quality of life and various models of home care in terminal oncology patients from a health area of Madrid].

Background: This study assesses the effectiveness of the palliative home care for the purpose of ascertaining whether terminal cancer patients treated by Homecare Support Teams have a better quality of life than those treated by Primary Care Teams.

Methods: A quasi-experimental prospective study conducted in Madrid Healthcare District 4 on patients referred from the hospital to Homecare Support Teams or to Primary Care Teams. The main study variable was the quality of life gauged using the Rotterdam Symptom Check List and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.