Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học quốc tế cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: "The ‘off-hour’ effect in trauma care: a possible quality indicator with appealing characteristic | Di Bartolomeo Scandinavian Journal of Trauma Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine 2011 19 33 http content 19 1 33 SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF St emergency medicine COMMENTARY Open Access The off-hour effect in trauma care a possible quality indicator with appealing characteristics Stefano Di Bartolomeo Abstract A recent paper has drawn attention to the paucity of widely accepted quality indicators for trauma care. At the same time several studies have measured whether mortality of trauma patients changes between normal working time and other parts of the day week . the so-called off-hour or weekend effect. This measure has the characteristics to become an accepted quality indicator because it combines the advantages of both outcome and process indicators. As an outcome indicator it would not need validation a procedure particularly difficult in trauma care where gathering scientific evidence is more difficult than in other disciplines. As a process indicator it would provide indications about where to intervene to improve quality. Introduction Although the importance of quality indicators QI is undisputed the debate concerning their validity is incessant. A recent systematic review 1 concluded that there is not a common set of clearly defined evidencebased and broadly accepted QIs for evaluating the quality of trauma care. A recent study 2 compared the mortality of trauma patients admitted inside and outside normal working hours in a North-American trauma system. Evenings nights and weekends were intended as non-working hours - also referred as after or off hours as opposed to office or business hours. The study found no difference however previous studies that investigated the so-called weekend or off-hour effect in various diseases yielded inconsistent results sometimes such a difference was found 3-8 15 and sometimes not 9-15 . This commentary discusses why the evaluation of the off-hour effect can also be considered a QI. Furthermore it examines .
