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A $3.3 million verdict against a surgeon who apologized to his patient's family for her death is leading some outpatient surgery professionals to wonder if the push for apologies and transparency has a dark side. Are managers encouraging physicians to say something that actually will work against them in court?
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A patient arrived from an assisted living facility with a documented allergy on the chart. Despite this safeguard, the patient still received an incorrect medication prior to the procedure. Fortunately, in this case, there was no lasting harm to the patient.
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Disclosing a medical error is never easy, but it can become especially complicated when you need to tell the patient that a previous provider was in the wrong. This delicate situation often requires communication with the other provider before you tell the patient anything.
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Educators often talk about "teachable moments," those times when the patient is ready to learn. This moment might be in a waiting area, exam room, or a hospital bed. To take advantage of these times, staff members in the Section of Patient Education at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, look for new ways to deliver patient education.
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Applying community engagement to mental health research can help researchers about design studies that incorporate the priorities of people with mental illness and arrive at the best strategies for working with them.
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All IRBs and IRB offices need to set up succession plans to ensure continuity in the event the IRB director or chair leave abruptly.
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Researchers say there need to be more clinical trials examining the safety and effectiveness of pain medications used with children, which are too often administered based on information from adult trials.
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An IRB dedicated to handling cancer research has shown benefits in efficiency and expertise when such a specialty IRB model is employed.
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Major research institutions can improve their IRBs' efficiency and protocol review quality by making the best use of a resource they have in abundance: expert professors and scientists.
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Seeing a need for ethics guidance for local groups attempting to conduct community-based research, an organization in Kitchener, Ontario, has created an independent Community Research Ethics Office (CREO).