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Many health-care professionals leave clinical practice temporarily or permanently. Interventions designed to facilitate the return of health-care professionals fail to consider returners’ psychosocial needs despite their importance for patient care. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a psychoeducational intervention in improving personal skills and well-being among UK-based health-care professionals returning to clinical practice.

In total, 20 health-care professionals took part in the one-day intervention and completed measures of demographics, self-efficacy, positive attitudes towards work and perceived job resources before and after the intervention. A baseline comparison group of 18 health-care professionals was also recruited.

Significant associations were detected between return-to-work stage and study group. Following the intervention, participants reported improvements in self-efficacy and, generally, perceived more job resources, whereas positive attitudes towards work decreased. While none of these changes were significant, the intervention was deemed acceptable by participants. This study provides modest but promising evidence for the role of psychoeducation as a tool in supporting the psychosocial needs of returning health-care professionals.

Additional research is needed to clarify the reliability of intervention effects, its effectiveness compared to alternative interventions, and the impact across different subgroups of returning health-care professionals.

Return-to-practice interventions should address the psychosocial needs of health-care professionals in terms of their personal skills and well-being. Psychoeducation can increase self-efficacy and perceptions of job resources among returning health-care professionals.

This study sheds light on a relatively understudied, but fundamental area – the psychosocial challenges of health-care professionals returning to clinical practice – and further justifies the need for tailored interventions.

This preliminary study aims to examine the use of a co-designed immersive virtual reality intervention programme in improving access to health care for people with intellectual disability.

A co-production approach was used to design a virtual reality intervention in collaboration with people with intellectual disability, their families and carers. A mixed-method single sample pre-test-post-test design examined using a virtual reality intervention simulating health-care environments to improve access of attending health-care appointments. Qualitative feedback was used to understand participants’ experience and opinions of using the digital technology.

The study found that the intervention did help people access health-care appointment and reduced their fear. Improvements were also found in quality-of-life post intervention. Positive feedback was provided from participants on using digital technologies indicating the novelty of the approach and potential further applications.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study which has used virtual reality to support people with intellectual disability access health care.

Intervention of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought up the issue of future job prospects in terms of the employability of the professionals and their readiness to harness the benefits of the AI. The purpose of this study is to recognize the implications of AI on employability by analyzing the issues in the health-care sector that if not addressed, can dampen the possibilities offered by AI intervention and its pervasiveness (Cornell University, INSEAD, and WIPO, 2019).

To get an insight on these concerns, an approach of total interpretive structural modelling, cross impact matrix multiplication applied to classification and path analysis have been used to understand the role of the critical factors influencing employability in the health-care sector.

This study primarily explores the driving-dependence power of the critical factors of the employability and displays hierarchical relationships. It also discusses measures which, if adopted, can enhance employability in the health-care sector with the intervention of AI.

Employability also has an impact on the productivity of the health-care service delivery which may provide a holistic opportunity to the management in health-care organizations to forecast the allocation and training of human resources and technological resources.

The paper attempts to analyze AI intervention and other driving factors (operational changes, customized training intervention, openness to learning, attitude toward technology, job-related skills and AI knowledge) to analyze their impact on employability with the changing needs. It establishes the hierarchical relationship among the critical factors influencing employability in the health-care sector because of the intervention of AI.

There is mixed evidence regarding the efficacy of low-intensity integrated care interventions in reducing the use of emergency services and costs of care. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a low-intensity intervention formulated for older adults and delivered in an urban medical center serving low-income individuals.

The intervention included an initial evaluation of stress, psychiatric symptomatology and health habits; potential referrals for lifestyle management and psychiatric treatment; and training for physicians about the impact of lifestyle change in older adults. Participants included older adults (at or above 50 years of age) seen as outpatients in an urban medical center serving a low-income community (n=945). Participants were entered into the intervention at any point during this two-year period. Mixed models analyses examined all visits for all enrolled individuals over a two-year period, comparing visits before the individual received the initial intervention evaluation to those received after this evaluation. Outcomes included total health care costs incurred, average cost per visit, and emergency department (ED) usage within the facility.

The intervention was associated with reduced likelihood of emergency department use and reduced costs per visit following the intervention. These effects were seen across all participants.

Limitations of the study include the lack of control group.

This program is easy to disseminate and could improve the quality of care and costs.

This study is among the few available to document a decrease in medical costs, as well as decreased ED utilization following a low-intensity integrated care intervention.

Disease management (DM) programs are being implemented throughout the health care delivery system as one way to contain costs, and they have demonstrated mixed efficacy. In most cases, DM programs have shown the best results when they promote access to preventive care services, and often have the poorest performance when they attempt to reduce variation. This paper examines the DM process as a seminal Continuous Quality Improvement intervention in health care. Medical experts have identified disease management as the premier method of influencing the cost and quality of health care as we move into the twentry‐first century. Results of interventions can be tracked and the quality of care is gradually being improved using these methodologies. The proposed presentation will detail the process and some examples of this approach

This research proposes a framework to guide the development and analysis of digital interventions, namely, through mobile applications, regarding labor and birth. By complying with current scientific evidence, this paper aims to contribute to the safeness and completeness of perinatal health education targeting expectant parents.

A content analysis was conducted on a document containing World Health Organization guidelines for intra-partum, considering the following categories: timeframe, care options, category of recommendation, to create a data set clearly distinguishing between recommendations and non-recommendations. Context-specific and research-context recommendations, details from dosages, measurements and timings, infant care and non-immediate postpartum topics were considered out of the scope of this study.

The results were summarized in a table, ready to be used as a data set, including the following 16 care options ranging from health, well-being and/or rights: respect, communication, companionship, pregnant person’s monitoring, status, fetal monitoring, pain relief, pain management, amenities, labor delay prevention, progress, freedom of choice, facilitation of birth, prevention of postpartum hemorrhage, umbilical cord care and recovery. These were distributed across six timeframes: always, admission, first, second and third stage of labor and immediate postpartum. In addition, recommendations and non-recommendations are displayed in different columns.

This transdisciplinary research intends to contribute to: future research on perinatal education; the creation of digital interventions, namely, m-health ones, targeting expectant parents by providing a framework of content coverage; the endorsement of the rights to Information and to decision-making. Ultimately, when put into practice, the framework can impact self-care through access to perinatal education.

In this chapter, we identify three distinct transformational performance improvement (TPI) approaches commonly used to redesign work processes in health care organizations. We describe the unique components or tools that each approach uses to improve the delivery of health services. We also summarize what is empirically known about the effectiveness of each TPI approach according to systematic reviews and recent studies published in the peer-reviewed literature. Based on examination of this research, we discuss what knowledge is still needed to strengthen the evidence for whole system transformation. This involves the use of conceptual frameworks to assess and guide implementation efforts, and facilitators and barriers to change as revealed in a recent evaluation of one major initiative, the Lean Enterprise Transformation (LET) at the Veterans Health Administration. The analysis suggests ways in which TPI facilitators can be developed and barriers reduced to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of quality initiatives. Finally, we discuss appropriate study designs to evaluate TPI interventions that may strengthen the evidence for their effectiveness in real world practice settings.

The purpose of this paper is to consider mental health issues in children and adolescents with chronic illness or health conditions, including their treatment, and issues related to delivery of services.

A selective review of the literature was conducted to highlight significant mental health issues and their treatment in youth with various types of chronic illness.

A significant portion of youth experience mental health problems related to their chronic health conditions. While evidence-based treatments are available to address these problems, significant barriers exist that impede the delivery of psychological and behavioral interventions for many youth.

More controlled studies are needed to demonstrate the effectiveness and cost offset of delivering psychological and behavioral interventions for the population of youth with various types of chronic health conditions, particularly in clinical and community settings.

Policy reform can ensure that mental health issues are effectively addressed for children with chronic illness. Policy is needed that promotes integrated health care, whereby psychological and behavioral interventions are delivered in health care settings along with medical interventions to reduce barriers to care.

Significant numbers of children and adolescents have chronic health conditions and many experience mental health problems related to their conditions. While evidence-based treatments are available to address these problems, significant barriers impede the delivery of psychological and behavioral interventions for many youth. Health care policy promoting integrated health care to deliver psychological and behavioral interventions in health care settings along with medical interventions should reduce barriers to care and improve both physical and mental health outcomes for youth.

Medical errors have become the third leading cause of death in the USA. Two million deaths from preventable medical errors will occur annually worldwide each year. The purpose of this paper is to find themes from the literature relating leadership styles – leadership approaches in practice – with success in reducing medical errors and patient safety.

This review analyzed primary and secondary sources based on a search for the terms leadership OR leadership style AND medical errors OR patient safety using five high-quality health-care-specific databases: Healthcare Administration Database from Proquest, LLC, Emerald Insight from Emerald Publishing Limited, ScienceDirect from Elsevier, Ovid from Ovid Technologies and MEDLINE with Full-Text from Elton B. Stevens Company. After narrowing, the review considered 21 sources that met the criteria.

The review found three leadership approaches and four leadership actions connected to successfully reducing medical errors and improving patient safety. Transformational, authentic and shared leadership produced successful outcomes. The review also found four leadership actions – regular checks on the front line and promoting teamwork, psychological safety and open communication – associated with successful outcomes. The review concluded that leadership appeared to be the preeminent factor in reducing medical errors and improving patient safety. It also found that positive leadership approaches, regardless of the safety intervention, led to improving results and outcomes.

This review was limited in three ways. First, the review only included sources from the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. While those countries have similar public-private health-care systems and similar socioeconomics, the problem of medical errors is global (Rodziewicz and Hipskind, 2019). Other leadership approaches or actions may have correlated to reducing medical errors by broadening the geographic selection parameters. Future research could remove geographic restrictions for selection. Second, the author has a bias toward leadership as distinctive from management. There may be additional insights gleaned from expanding the search terms to include management concepts. Third, the author is a management consultant to organizations seeking to improve health-care safety. The author’s bias against limited action as opposed to strategic leadership interventions is profound and significant. This bias may generalize the problem more than necessary.

There are three direct practical implications from this review. The limitations of this review bound these implications. First, organizations might assess strategic and operational leaders to determine their competencies for positive leadership. Second, organizations just beginning to frame or reframe a safety strategy can perhaps combine safety and leadership interventions for better outcomes. Third, organizations could screen applicants to assess team membership and team leadership orientation and competencies.

This review is valuable to practitioners who are interested in conceptual relationships between leadership approaches, safety culture and reducing medical errors. The originality of this research is limited to that of any literature review. It summarizes the main themes in the selected literature. The review provides a basis for future considerations centered on dual organizational interventions for leadership and safety.

This study examined the effectiveness of using the Internet to teach consumers about quality health care, compared consumer definitions of quality health care prior to and following completion of the Internet experience, and compared ratings of learning, satisfaction and value of the Internet instruction between consumers who completed the Internet intervention alone and consumers who completed the Internet intervention and interacted with a nurse. A total of 34 people from a community library participated in this randomized comparative study. The intervention was effective in increasing consumer knowledge of quality care from pre‐ to post‐test. Although there were no significant differences between the two groups in knowledge gain, consumers in the interaction group had significantly higher scores on usefulness of the information in assessing the quality of care they are receiving from their health‐care providers.