The Research Scan

Every month we scan thousands of journals to select and summarise around 60 of the most interesting studies about healthcare improvement.

See the tabs below to browse or download this month’s scan.

About the research scan

2013-05-30T00:00:00+01:00

Highlights
Person-centred care
Patient safety
Value for money
Approaches to improvement

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This month's highlights

Navigators increase patient confidence in decisions

A ‘decision navigator’ helps patients plan questions to ask at consultations and provides a summary of the consultation. Researchers from Scotland found that these professionals can help people share in treatment decisions and feel more confident about the decisions they make. This may be a relatively simple and inexpensive intervention to try in other areas, and could be tested using support staff, health professionals or fellow patients.

See all summaries about person-centred care published in May.

Immediate support needed for staff involved in safety incidents

Nearly half of health professionals may be the 'second victim' of a patient safety incident through psychological harm, at least once in their career. A systematic review of 31 articles about the support available for health professionals who have been involved in a patient safety event found that sometimes support from organisations is provided quite late after the event and may not involve all parties. More immediate support strategies may be needed.

See all summaries about patient safety published in May.

Increasing nurse numbers may reduce readmissions for children

An analysis of data about children’s nurse staffing levels in 225 US hospitals found that lower staff-to-patient ratios may result in fewer children being readmitted 15-30 days after discharge. This may be because nurses with fewer patients to care for have more time to spend on monitoring conditions and discharge preparation. Hospitals with nurse staffing ratios of 1:4 or less were least likely to have high readmission rates.

See all summaries about value for money published in May.

GIS maps identify areas with high need and low services

Researchers in the US have pioneered a new way to use publicly available data to guide improvement. County-level diabetes-related rates and resources were collated from online sources and mapped using GIS software. This helped to show areas where there was a high level of need, but few medical, community and self-management services available to help. This approach could be used with other conditions to highlight geographic areas where a targeted approach is needed to address service shortages.

See all summaries about approaches to improvement published in May.

Download May scan (PDF) View scan archive

Methods and design of included studies

Systematic reviews draw together the findings of different studies using structured methods, and describe how studies were found.
Literature reviews draw on a range of different studies but don’t always use structured methods or describe the methods used in detail.
Randomised controlled trials allocate people to different groups at the start of the study and then follow them up at the same time to see if there is a difference between groups. Because people are randomly allocated to each group, if there is a difference between the groups this should be due to whatever is being tested.
Non randomised comparisons (quasi trials) compare two groups, but people are not randomly allocated to each group so it is less clear whether any difference between groups is a result of whatever is being tested or something else.
Before and after studies look at what happens to a group of people over time. A measure is taken at the start of the study (before the intervention) and again later (after the intervention).
Interviews ask people questions in person or by telephone. The questions and answers tend to be longer and more in depth than surveys.
Surveys ask people a series of questions online, on paper or by telephone. The questions tend to be short and structured.
Observational studies (assorted methods) include focus groups, observing people’s behaviour or a mix of interviews, surveys, document analysis or other methods.
Data analyses or document analyses involves drawing information from existing documents or databases or analysing datasets that have been collected for another purpose.
Case studies use various methods to look at one organisation or group in detail to outline a narrative of what can be learnt from the specific example.
Case control studies look back over time and compare one group (the cases or group that something happened to or who have a certain condition) to another group.
Cost analyses can include a variety of methods for analysing the costs and savings of an intervention.

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Methods and design of included studies

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