Research on illness perceptions has confirmed that patients' beliefs are associated with important outcomes in a broadening range of illnesses and risk factor testing. New interventions based on this model have the potential to improve patient outcomes but have yet to be widely developed and applied.

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Improvements in team engagement and compliance with administering checklist items followed introduction of migrated leadership of checklist administration and a wall-mounted checklist. This paradigm change was relatively simple and inexpensive.

Children today face increasingly high stress levels, impacting their well-being. Schools can play a crucial role in teaching social and emotional skills, therefore there is a need to identify effective interventions. This mixed-methods study of 124 elementary school students from three New Zealand schools aimed to (1) assess if children experienced improved well-being after an 8-week mindfulness program, and (2) understand their perceptions of the program. Participants completed these self-rated scales: the Mindful Awareness Attention Scale for Children and the Stirling Children's Well-being Scale. Six children were interviewed about their perceptions and classroom teachers' observations were reviewed. Quantitative data indicated a steady increase in students' mindfulness whilst well-being increased significantly but returned to baseline levels at three-month follow up. Changes in mindfulness were positively related to changes in well-being. The study results suggest the importance of offering mindfulness-based programs for potential improvements in students' well-being.

We have developed a generic instrument for comprehensively rating the administration of the SSC and informing initiatives to realise its full potential. We have provided data supporting its capacity for discrimination, internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Further psychometric evaluation is warranted.

We implemented the World Health Organization surgical safety checklist at Auckland City Hospital from November 2007. We hypothesised that the checklist would reduce postoperative mortality and increase days alive and out of hospital, both measured to 90 postoperative days. We compared outcomes for cohorts who had surgery during 18-month periods before vs. after checklist implementation. We also analysed outcomes during 9 years that included these periods (July 2004-December 2013). We analysed 9475 patients in the 18month period before the checklist and 10,589 afterwards. We analysed 57,577 patients who had surgery from 2004 to 2013. Mean number of days alive and out of hospital (95%CI) in the cohort after checklist implementation was 1.0 (0.4-1.6) days longer than in the cohort preceding implementation, p < 0.001. Ninetyday mortality was 395/9475 (4%) and 362/10,589 (3%) in the cohorts before and after checklist implementation, multivariable odds ratio (95%CI) 0.93 (0.80-1.09), p = 0.4. The cohort changes in these outcomes were indistinguishable from longer-term trends in mortality and days alive and out of hospital observed during 9 years, as determined by Bayesian changepoint analysis. Postoperative mortality to 90 days was 228/5686 (4.0%) for M aori and 2047/51,921 (3.9%) for non-M aori, multivariable odds ratio (95%CI) 0.85 (0.73-0.99), p = 0.04. M aori spent on average (95%CI) 1.1 (0.5-1.7) fewer days alive and out of hospital than non-M aori, p < 0.001. In conclusion, our patients experienced improving postoperative outcomes from 2004 to 2013, including the periods before and after implementation of the surgical checklist. M aori patients had worse outcomes than non-M aori.

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