Several mandatory and voluntary further training programs in healthcare and long-term care sectors are available in Canada. However, the relation between further training of care workers and quality of patient care in hospitals, home care settings, and residential care facilities are unclear. This study investigates the association of further training of nurses, healthcare workers, and care assistants, as well as the health workers' staffing levels with quality of life of older adults in Canada. Cross-sectional data, which included quality of life variables, such as medication errors, fall injuries, and complaints of older adults across healthcare and social care sectors, were drawn from the Canadian National Survey of the Work and Health of Nurses. The additional training of health workers has a positive association with quality of elder care by reducing incidence of fall injury and medication error and increasing resident satisfaction of patients. Staffing level among health workers is also positively associated with these quality of life variables. The findings of the study suggest that health worker staffing level and further professional training can improve quality of life of older adults. This study is original in that it examined a national representative sample from Canada and quality of life variables. Previous studies have not used such a survey thus far. Moreover, this study is unique because it connects professional development and further education to quality of life factors, such as incidence of fall injuries and medication errors, and resident satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: This study compares Canadian and German healthcare workers employment status and wages based on age, gender, and educational training. The German and Canadian healthcare systems are rarely compared, that if such a comparison between the two countries is available, can provide an insight of health workers employment status and how that might affect the wellbeing of elderly. OBJECTIVES: The study investigates the relation of age, gender and post-basic training with annual employment and income of health care workers in Canada and Germany. METHODS: Secondary data on age, gender, post-basic education training, employment status and average monthly wages/salary was obtained from the German Socioeconomic Panel and the Canadian Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics data. The German dataset comprised 571 healthcare workers, including 219 nurses, 231 elder carers and 121 care assistants. The Canadian dataset comprised 2,580 healthcare workers, including 947 nurses, 493 elder carers and 1,140 care assistants. RESULTS: Primarily, there was a strong relationship between post-basic training and wages for both the Canadian and German samples among elder carers and care assistants. Older healthcare workers (46 years old and above) were generally employed, and age had no predictive power on annual labor earnings. This difference in age was significant among the Canadian than the German nurses. Post-basic training had a significant relation with annual earnings and monthly wages in both the Canadian and German samples. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the socio-demographics of healthcare workers as age, gender and advanced training are associated with their employment opportunities, financial rewards, and better career opportunities. The relationship between demographic variables helps understand the relation of healthcare workers employment dispositions and how it might improve the quality of life of older people in nursing homes, hospitals and elderly private homes in Canada and Germany.

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IMNCI tool has widely been applied in many countries for screening, clinical diagnosis, and as a management tool for many common diseases, including cases of pneumonia. This study determines the effectiveness of IMNCI tools in the diagnosis of pneumonia as that of diagnosing pneumonia by gold standard method of X-ray Chest PA view besides finding out the sustainability in using the IMNCI guided antibiotics in managing cases of pneumonia from first care to the tertiary care facilities. Methodology: We conducted a prospective, cross-sectional study among children with World Health Organization (WHO) Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) chest-indrawing pneumonia at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan and assessed CXR examinations. The primary endpoint was interrater reliability between CXR for pneumonia diagnosis among children with WHO IMCI chest-indrawing pneumonia. Results: The study was done among 165 children aged between 2 months to 59 months who have visited Fatima Hospital, Baqai Medical University, due to their medical condition of cough OR fast breathing. Most of the mothers had been taking antibiotics for their sick children before they reached our set up and very few of them (15%) were found adherent to taking IMCI guided IMCI-guided antibiotic Amoxicillin, whereas the rest of all a huge majority of the cases were found using non-IMCI guided antibiotics constituting 85%, means other than oral Amoxicillin. A Sensitivity of 68.75% and a Specificity of 92.3% were found to IMCI tools validity in diagnosing pneumonia against X-ray chest positivity. Conclusion: This study concludes that the accuracy of IMCI tools in recognizing childhood pneumonia was good rather than the diagnosis as that to the positive findings in Xray Chest findings. However, with good sensitivity and the best specificity with high PPV, it can be the best screening tool for the early detection of pneumonia among children<5 years and can achieve a better outcome with in-time recognition, appropriate care seeking, and early intervention avoiding irrational antibiotics. Keywords: ARI: Acute Respiratory Infection, AIDS: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, BMU: Baqai Medical University, IMCI: Integrated Management of Childhood Illness, IMNCI: Integrated Management of Neonatal & Childhood Illness, WHO: World Health Organization, UNICEF: United Nations International Children’s Education Funds, MDG: Millennium Development Goal, SDG: Sustainable Development Goal, MNCH: Maternal, Neonatal & Child Health Program

A radiology report serves as an intermediary between a radiologist and referring clinician for suggesting appropriate treatment to the patients, aimed at better healthcare management. It is essentially a tool that assists radiologists in conveying their input to the patients and clinicians regarding positive or negative findings on a case. The objective of this paper is to discuss and propose Radiology Information & Reporting System (RIRS), highlight challenges governing its implementation and suggest way forwards towards its effective implementation across the public sector tertiary care institutions of Pakistan. In the end, it is concluded that the proposed RIRS would potentially offer enormous benefits in terms of cost savings, reporting accuracy, faster processing and operational efficiency as opposed to the conventionally available manual radiology reporting procedures and systems.