This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

It’s your complete guide to nursing — from basic concepts to essential skills! Fundamentals of Nursing, 9th Edition prepares you to succeed as a nurse by providing a solid foundation in critical thinking, evidence-based practice, nursing theory, and safe clinical care in all settings. With illustrated, step-by-step guidelines, this book makes it easy to learn important skills and procedures. Care plans are presented within a nursing process framework, and case studies show how to apply concepts to nursing practice. From an expert author team led by Patricia Potter and Anne Griffin Perry, this bestselling nursing textbook helps you develop the understanding and clinical reasoning you need to provide excellent patient care. 51 skills demonstrations provide illustrated, step-by-step instructions for safe nursing care — and include rationales for each step. 29 procedural guidelines provide streamlined, step-by-step instructions for performing basic skills. UNIQUE! Critical Thinking Models in each clinical chapter show how to apply the nursing process and critical thinking to achieve successful clinical outcomes. Evidence-Based Practice chapter shows how nursing research helps in determining best practices. UNIQUE! Caring for the Cancer Survivor chapter prepares nurses to care for cancer patients who may still face physical and emotional issues. Case studies include unique clinical application questions and exercises, allowing you to practice using care plans and concept maps. The 5-step nursing process provides a consistent framework for care, and is demonstrated in more than 20 care plans. 15 review questions in every chapter test your retention of key concepts, with answers available in the book and on the Evolve companion website. Practical study tools on Evolve include video clips of skills, skills checklists, printable key points, a fluid & electrolytes tutorial, a concept map creator, an audio glossary, and more. UNIQUE! Clear, streamlined writing style makes complex material more approachable. More than 20 concept maps show care planning for clients with multiple nursing diagnoses. Key points and key terms in each chapter summarize important content for more efficient review and study. Unexpected Outcomes and Related Interventions for each skill alert you to potential problems and appropriate nursing actions. Delegation coverage clarifies which tasks can and cannot be delegated. A glossary provides quick access to definitions for all key terms.

A guide to using the power of S-PLUS to perform statistical analyses, providing both an introduction to the program and a course in modern statistical methods. Readers are assumed to have a basic grounding in statistics, thus the book is intended for would-be users, as well as students and researchers using statistics. Throughout, the emphasis is on presenting practical problems and full analyses of real data sets, with many of the methods discussed being modern approaches to topics such as linear and non-linear regression models, robust and smooth regression methods, survival analysis, multivariate analysis, tree-based methods, time series, spatial statistics, and classification. This second edition is intended for users of S-PLUS 3.3, or later, and covers both Windows and UNIX. It treats the recent developments in graphics and new statistical functionality, including bootstraping, mixed effects linear and non-linear models, factor analysis, and regression with autocorrelated errors. The authors have written several software libraries which enhance S-PLUS, and these, plus all the datasets used, are available on the Internet.

For every person over the age of 65 in today's European Union there are four people of working age but by 2050 there will only be two. Demand for long-term care of which home care forms a significant part will inevitably increase in the decades to come. Despite the importance of the issue however up-to-date and comparative information on home care in Europe is lacking. This book attempts to fill some of that gap by examining current European policy on home care services and strategies. Home care in Europe probes a wide range of topics including the links between social services and health-care.