Backgroud: Since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, healthcare workers (HCWs) have been the workers most likely to contract the disease. Intensive focus is therefore needed on hospital strategies that minimize exposure and diffusion, confer protection and facilitate early detection and isolation of infected personnel. Methods: To evaluate the early impact of a structured risk-management for exposed COVID-19 HCWs and describe how their characteristics contributed to infection and diffusion. Socio-demographic and clinical data, aspects of the event-exposure (date, place, length and distance of exposure, use of PPE) and details of the contact person were collected. Results: The 2411 HCWs reported 2924 COVID-19 contacts. Among 830 HCWs who were at 'high or medium risk', 80 tested positive (9.6%). Physicians (OR=2.03), and non-medical services resulted in an increased open access www.lamedicinadellavoro.it covid-19 infection and diffusion 185
Background: Commonly, the management of the main hospital activities are organized by different software packages that run on desktop computers which may not always allow a fast and practical use by health operators. This problem could be alleviated through the use of mobile health. The aim of this study was to give an overview of smartphone and tablet applications used for hospital management and administration, in order to evaluate their features and analyse them according to their contents, number of downloads and field of application.Methods: Researchers performed the survey on the two main application stores available on the Internet: iTunes for Apple devices and Google Play for Android devices. Using specific keywords, 47 apps were identified and met inclusion criteria.Results: Most of the applications were designed for health operators and patients' management (76.6%), 12.8% were apps focused on the organization and setting of the hospital resources, while 10.6% included apps that could help hospital administrators to perform self-evaluations of their structures, processes and outcomes. The large majority of apps (80.7%) counted less than 1000 downloads. Most of them (87.5%) were in English and free to download (93.6%).
Discussion:The results of first attempt to provide an overview about this emerging topic showed how, despite the existence of several applications for hospital management purposes, these tools appear to be still poorly widespread. In our opinion, there is a strong need to assess furtherly the quality of these applications, thus it may be worth to continue monitoring this field in order to analyse eventual improvements in the design and diffusion of these apps.
Background: Commonly, the management of the main hospital activities are organized by different software packages that run on desktop computers which may not always allow a fast and practical use by health operators. This problem could be alleviated through the use of mobile health. The aim of this study was to give an overview of smartphone and tablet applications used for hospital management and administration, in order to evaluate their features and analyse them according to their contents, number of downloads and field of application.Methods: Researchers performed the survey on the two main application stores available on the Internet: iTunes for Apple devices and Google Play for Android devices. Using specific keywords, 47 apps were identified and met inclusion criteria.Results: Most of the applications were designed for health operators and patients' management (76.6%), 12.8% were apps focused on the organization and setting of the hospital resources, while 10.6% included apps that could help hospital administrators to perform self-evaluations of their structures, processes and outcomes. The large majority of apps (80.7%) counted less than 1000 downloads. Most of them (87.5%) were in English and free to download (93.6%).
Discussion:The results of first attempt to provide an overview about this emerging topic showed how, despite the existence of several applications for hospital management purposes, these tools appear to be still poorly widespread. In our opinion, there is a strong need to assess furtherly the quality of these applications, thus it may be worth to continue monitoring this field in order to analyse eventual improvements in the design and diffusion of these apps.
Living kidney donation is the most common type of living-donor transplant. Italian guidelines allow the living donations from emotionally related donors only after clear and voluntary consent expressed by both the donor and the recipient involved. Living donation raises ethical and legal issues because donors voluntarily undergo a surgical procedure to remove a healthy kidney in order to help another person. According to the Italian standards, the assessment of living donor-recipient pair has to be conducted by a medical “third party”, completely independent from both the patients involved and the medical team treating the recipient. Starting from the Hospital “Città della Salute e della Scienza” of Turin (Italy) experience, including 116 living kidney donations, the Authors divided the evaluation process performed by the “Third-Party” Commission into four stages, with a particular attention to the potential donor. Living donation procedures should reflect fiduciary duties that healthcare providers have toward their patients, originating from the relationship of trust between physician and patient. In addition to that, the social implications are enormous if one considers the worldwide campaigns to promote public awareness about organ donation and transplantation, and to encourage people to register their organ donation decisions. The systematic process proposed here can be a tool that proactively reduces and controls the risks of coercion, organ trafficking, vitiated consent, insufficient weighting of donative choice, that could arise especially in donors involved in living kidney donation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.