Colleague van Dijk wrote an interesting article about the perception of pain scores, based on the relationship between two questionnaires and the results on these questionnaires of patients and caregivers (van Dijk et al., 2011). It is a nice article with a good description of the questionnaires and …

Patient care guidelines are usually implemented one at a time, yet patients are at risk for multiple, often preventable, adverse events simultaneously. This study aimed to test the effect of the SAFE or SORRY? programme on the incidence of three adverse events (pressure ulcers, urinary tract infections …

Delirium is a serious and frequent psycho-organic disorder in critically ill patients. Reported incidence rates vary to a large extent and there is a paucity of data concerning delirium incidence rates for the different subgroups of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and their short-term health consequences. …

Patient care guidelines are usually implemented one at a time, yet patients are at risk for multiple, often preventable, adverse events simultaneously. The SAFE or SORRY? programme targeted three adverse events (pressure ulcers, urinary tract infections and falls) and was successful in reducing the incidence …

We thank the authors Hayden and Glenn for commenting on our paper ‘The introduction of a nursing guideline on depression at psychogeriatric nursing home wards: Effects on Certified Nurse Assistants’, which was published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies (Verkaik et al., 2011). In our paper …

In psychiatric care professionals perceive some patients as 'difficult', especially patients with long-term non-psychotic disorders. For these patients few evidence-based treatments exist. An intervention program, Interpersonal Community Psychiatric Treatment (ICPT), was developed by the authors. It …

Because dental health and oral pathology may affect forensic psychiatric patients' well being, it is important to be able to assess oral health related quality of life (OH-QoL) in these patients. Two studies were conducted among Dutch forensic psychiatric male patients to assess the psychometric properties …

AIM: This paper is a report of a study conducted to describe the accuracy of nursing documentation in patient records in hospitals. Background.  Accurate nursing documentation enables nurses to systematically review the nursing process and to evaluate the quality of care. Assessing nurses' reports in …

To date, it is unknown whether waist circumference can be measured validly and reliably when a subject is in a supine position. This issue is relevant when international standards for healthy participants are applied to persons with severe intellectual, sensory, and motor disabilities. Thus, the aims …

Background: Patients in hospitals and nursing homes are at risk for the development of often preventable adverse events. Guidelines for the prevention of many types of adverse events are available, however compliance with these guidelines appears to be lacking. As a result many patients do not receive …