PURPOSE: This study was done to determine how a hospital life guidance movie enhanced the understanding of hospital life by elderly in-patients. METHOD: A non-equivalent control group post-test design was used for the study. The experimental group watched a movie on guidance for hospital life while an in-patient control group read corresponding guidance booklets. The understanding and satisfaction from the respective programs for the two groups were surveyed with a questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS. RESULTS: The group which watched the movie had a better understanding of hospital life than the group which read the booklets. The patients who watched the movie also expressed more satisfaction with their guide program than the patients who only read the booklets. Understanding of hospital life had relevance to satisfaction with the given program. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggests that a movie on hospital life provides better guidance which helps the prospective patients understand and adapt better to their hospital life. Therefore, this type of movie is considered to be an effective medium to provide guidance to elderly in-patients.
Aged ; Humans ; Pamphlets ; Patient Admission ; Patient Education as Topic ; Questionnaires

OBJECTIVE: In June 28, 2012, a 'Hospitalization guideline for car accident patients' was announced to mediate the clash of opinions about the hospitalization of minor head trauma patients among doctors, patients and insurance companies. The guideline was issued to describe the patients' symptoms and emotions in detail after the injury. In this paper, evaluation for the guideline and suggestions for modifications was done. METHODS: Thirty-two doctors, 96 patients and 60 employees were each given surveys about the hospitalization guidelines, related personnels' attitude and evaluation of patients' emotional problems. The frequency, ratio and chi-square test were performed. RESULTS: Sixty-eight point eight percent of doctors, 79.8% patients and 91.6% insurance company employees agreed to the need for a guideline. Among the 68.8% doctors that supported the need for a guideline, 18.8% knew that the guideline actually existed. Sixty-nine point two percent of doctors said that they would apply the guideline once they were introduced to it. Among the announced guideline provisions, 'Glasgow coma score less than 15' and 'socially not suitable for discharge' required reevaluation since 40.6% all surveyors consented that these two criteria were not suitable. The consensus supporting the need for emotional evaluation came out to be 78.1%, 58.5%, 50.9% in doctors, patients and insurance employees respectively. CONCLUSION: Although a guideline for hospitalization of minor head injury patients is necessary, some part of it seems to be reevaluated and improved, especially for clauses related to the patient's emotional problems. These changes and revisions to the guideline require further speculation and research.
Coma ; Consensus ; Craniocerebral Trauma* ; Hospitalization* ; Humans ; Insurance ; Patient Admission

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to determine the relationships between weather and calendar variables and the admission volume at the emergency center in Daejon city. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Daily patient volume from January to November 2003 was matched with calendar and weather variables. Calendar variables included season, day of the week, holidays, and the day after a holiday. Weather variables included daily maximum, minimum, and average temperatures and other factors such as snowfall and rainfall. RESULTS: The average daily admission volume was 282 +/- 54 persons (187~605), and the most highly significant calendar and weather variables related with admission volume were holidays and maximal temperature, respectively. A regression model was calculated as follows: the daily patient volume = 214 + 2 x (maximal temperature) + 113 x (holiday) + 26.8 x (day after a holiday). This equation could estimate about 62.6% of the daily patient volumes. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that the temperature and a holiday may influence the number of visiting patients. Thus, the staffing level should be set appropriately by considering the estimated patient volume.
Daejeon ; Emergencies* ; Holidays ; Humans ; Meteorological Concepts ; Patient Admission ; Seasons ; Weather

PURPOSE: Family-caregivers of stroke patients usually go through hardship and life style changes during the protracted course of a family member's rehabilitation. There is need for programs to educate family-caregivers to better manage the medical crisis. In this study an evaluation was done of the degrees of burden and well-being experienced by primary family-caregivers following video-guided education (VGE) on rehabilitation and family lifestyle changes. METHODS: Fifty-eight primary family-caregivers of stroke patients on a neurological ward were divided into VGE (29) and control (29) groups. VGE was started within 7 days of patient admission. Interventions included VGE, counseling, and demonstration - re-demonstration. The control group received standard education but not VGE. Data were analyzed using Chi-square test, t-test, ANCOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficients with the SAS program. RESULTS: The VGE group had a significantly lower score for total burden (F=7.19, p=.010) and for sub-scale of time-dependent burden (F=8.44, p=.005) than the control group. There was a negative correlation between primary family-caregiver burden and well-being (r=-.7151, p<.001). CONCLUSION: Results suggest that the rehabilitation program using VGE was an effective nursing intervention to reduce the burden of primary family-caregivers of stroke patients.
Caregivers ; Counseling ; Humans ; Life Style ; Patient Admission ; Phenothiazines ; Stroke

PURPOSE: Emergency departments (ED) are always overcrowded. Overcrowding is an important problem associated with emergency department treatment and patient satisfaction. Overcrowding can be caused by specific and complex issues and is affected by multiple influences. In an effort to reduce the degree of overcrowding, we evaluated relationships within the SMS (short message service) specialist's notification system. METHODS: This study involved establishment of a SMS specialist's notification system and other activity for resolution of emergency department overcrowding. We conducted a comparative analysis of ED patients from January 2010 to December 2010, before establishment of the system, and from January 2011 to December 2011, after establishment of the system. Data on ED patients were obtained from electronic medical records and the clinical data warehouse. Data were compared for mean length of stay and patient admission number. RESULTS: Results of comparison showed that the mean length of stay for discharge, admission, operation, and transfer had been effectively reduced. Mean residence time for patients in each administration sector was reduced 80.3, 462.3, 127.3, and 89.3 minutes, respectively, after overcrowding had been diminished. Significant differences for mean residence time were observed in each sector (p<0.001). In addition, comparison of before and after adoption of the SMS specialist's notification system for each clinical department showed that mean length of stay of patients admitted to the emergency department was significantly shorter after its adoption. CONCLUSION: By establishing a SMS specialist notification system, overcrowding can be resolved and length of stay can be shortened, which would result in improved satisfaction of both patients and emergency department professionals.
Adoption ; Electronic Health Records ; Emergencies ; Humans ; Length of Stay ; Patient Admission ; Patient Satisfaction ; Specialization

PURPOSE: Recently, the emergency departments of most general hospitals have been overcrowded, and one of the major causes is the increased number of pediatric patients. Therefore, our hospital separated the pediatric emergency room from the emergency department, and we assessed the effect of that separation. METHODS: Pediatric patients below 15 years of age who visited the emergency department from March 1998 to February 1999, which was before the separation, and from March 1999 to February 2000, which was after the separation, were included in this study. RESULTS: The average lengths of stay of pediatric and nonpediatric patients at emergency department before separation were 1.9+/-3.5 and 2.6+/-5 hours, respectively, and declined to 1.6+/-2.4 and 2.3+/-4.7 after separation (p<0.05). The waiting time until admission declined notably from 3.6+/-2.5 hours to 3.3+/-5.6 hours for pediatric patients, in spite of the fact that the number of pediatric admissions increased (p<0.05). In non-pediatric patients, it declined from 3.1+/-3.3 to 2.6+/-3.5 hours (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: The separation of the emergency department into pediatric and non-pediatric departments reduced emergency-department crowding, the length of stay at the emergency department, and, the waiting time until admission. A fundamental solution to the problem of emergency-department crowding requires an independent pediatric emergency department, an increased number of emergency physicians, increased paramedic coverage, and more efficient hospital policies regarding laboratory, radiology, and admission procedures.
Allied Health Personnel ; Crowding ; Emergencies* ; Emergency Service, Hospital* ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Length of Stay ; Patient Admission

BACKGROUNDMedical superstitions remain prevalent in today's stressful and technology driven healthcare environment. These irrational beliefs commonly involve night calls, which are periods of volatile workload. In Singapore and Hong Kong, it is commonly held that consumption of steamed buns ("bao") by on-call physicians is associated with increased patient admissions and mortality, due to a homonymous interpretation of the word "bao" in dialect.

MATERIALS AND METHODSA prospective unblinded randomised controlled trial with a permuted block randomisation design was performed on weekdays over 6 weeks. Steamed buns or control food were offered to the internal medicine night-call team of a tertiary-care hospital on a nightly basis. Information on admissions and mortality was collected from the hospital electronic database. Data on sleep patterns and shift duration were obtained by interview.

RESULTSThere were no significant differences in the median number of hours slept on days on "bao" administration versus "control" intervention (2 +/- median absolute variation of 1.5 h vs 2 +/- 1.5 h, P = 0.30) or in the number of hours spent in the hospital (30.8 +/- 1.9 h vs 30.5 +/- 2.2 h, P = 0.09). There were no significant differences in the median number of general ward admissions per night (n = 73 +/- 6 versus 71 +/- 7 admissions, P = 0.35), monitored care unit admissions (4 +/- 1.5 vs 4 +/- 1.5 admissions, P = 0.65) or inpatient mortality (2 +/- 1.5 vs 2 +/- 1.5 deaths per night, P = 0.47).

CONCLUSIONThe consumption of steamed buns ("bao") has no effect on inpatient admissions, mortality, or sleep duration on call. Regardless, our results indicate that the night call in Singapore remains a challenge in terms of workload and shift duration.

This paper was aimed to find an efficient plan for the arrangement of the beds in hospitals so that the bed-operating efficiency could be raised and the requirements of patients could be perfectly met. After analyzing the data using the method of mathematical statistics, we defined the concept of "Waste Index". In addition to the concept, we realized the auto-simulation of the model using the dynamic programming model, and design the program by MATLAB. We got the characteristics of bed-occupation conditions by data analysis. We obtained the result of optimizing model by programming and the most efficient plan which was obviously better than the traditional FCFS (First Come First Serve) plan. It can be well concluded that the mathematical model should be of great maneuverability in the practical situation to ameliorate the management efficiency of hospital beds considerably.
China ; Efficiency, Organizational ; Hospital Administration ; Hospital Bed Capacity ; Humans ; Models, Theoretical ; Ophthalmology ; Patient Admission

Asthma ; drug therapy ; mortality ; Cost of Illness ; Humans ; Patient Admission ; trends ; Singapore ; epidemiology

A retrospective survey of 169 burns cases admitted to Port Moresby General Hospital was conducted for the period 1978 to 1984. A third of the patients were young children. Hot-water burns were the commonest type of injury, accounting for 43%. This was followed by accidental falls into a fire and suicidal kerosene burns, which accounted for 28% and 13% respectively. Post-burn contractures were the commonest long-term complications. Prevention of burns is theoretically very attractive but hard to achieve in rural and squatter populations who rely almost entirely on open fires for cooking and heating. Burns awareness campaigns by all government and community groups stressing the dangers of open fires and leaving children unattended would no doubt take a long time but might ultimately produce tangible results.
Burns - epidemiology ; Burns - therapy ; Hospitals, General - statistics & ; numerical data ; Patient Admission - statistics & ; numerical data