McMaster University

About: McMaster University is a education organization based out in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 41361 authors who have published 101269 publications receiving 4251422 citations.

Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: I. How to Get Started

Abstract: CLINICAL SCENARIO You are a primary care physician inspired by a recent editorial in JAMA about lifelong learning. 1 You decide to use some of the time you normally take for continuing medical education conferences for "practice-based education" tailored to your own practice. You begin by setting aside 2 hours every week to read about relevant clinical problems. It is now Friday morning and you have 2 hours to spend in the hospital library. You review a one-page list of questions you have generated from the patients you've seen in the prior week. Your questions include these: What should you tell a 33-year-old woman with migraine headaches who has asked for a prescription for sumatriptan after reading a magazine article about it? Should you be screening older men in your practice for prostate cancer? What should you tell the mother of a 6-month-old boy who had a febrile seizure about

Multivariate SPC Methods for Process and Product Monitoring

Abstract: Statistical process control methods for monitoring processes with multivariate measurements in both the product quality variable space and the process variable space are considered. Traditional multivariate control charts based on X2 and T2 statistics ..

The question of animal culture

Abstract: In this paper I consider whether traditional behaviors of animals, like traditions of humans, are transmitted by imitation learning. Review of the literature on problem solving by captive primates, and detailed consideration of two widely cited instances of purported learning by imitation and of culture in free-living primates (sweet-potato washing by Japanese macaques and termite fishing by chimpanzees), suggests that nonhuman primates do not learn to solve problems by imitation. It may, therefore, be misleading to treat animal traditions and human culture as homologous (rather than analogous) and to refer to animal traditions as cultural.

The impact of measuring patient-reported outcomes in clinical practice: a systematic review of the literature.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to summarize the best evidence regarding the impact of providing patient-reported outcomes (PRO) information to health care professionals in daily clinical practice. Systematic review of randomized clinical trials (Medline, Cochrane Library; reference lists of previous systematic reviews; and requests to authors and experts in the field). Out of 1,861 identified references published between 1978 and 2007, 34 articles corresponding to 28 original studies proved eligible. Most trials (19) were conducted in primary care settings performed in the USA (21) and assessed adult patients (25). Information provided to professionals included generic health status (10), mental health (14), and other (6). Most studies suffered from methodologic limitations, including analysis that did not correspond with the unit of allocation. In most trials, the impact of PRO was limited. Fifteen of 23 studies (65%) measuring process of care observed at least one significant result favoring the intervention, as did eight of 17 (47%) that measured outcomes of care. Methodological concerns limit the strength of inference regarding the impact of providing PRO information to clinicians. Results suggest great heterogeneity of impact; contexts and interventions that will yield important benefits remain to be clearly defined.