Instruments for Clinical Health-Care Research, Third Edition will facilitate researching clinical concepts and variables of interest, and will enhance the focus on linking clinical variable assessment with routine measurement of everyday clinical interventions.

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.

In a workshop organized by the Clinical Research roundtable, representatives from purchaser organizations (employers), payer organizations (health plans and insurance companies), and other stakeholder organizations (voluntary health associations, clinical researchers, research organizations, and the technology community) came together to explore: What do purchasers and payers need from the Clinical Research Enterprise? How have current efforts in clinical research met their needs? What are purchasers, payers, and other stakeholders willing to contribute to the enterprise? This book documents these discussions and summarizes what employers and insurers need from and are willing to contribute to clinical research from both a business and a national health care perspective.

Guidelines for the clinical practice of medicine have been proposed as the solution to the whole range of current health care problems. This new book presents the first balanced and highly practical view of guidelinesâ€"their strengths, their limitations, and how they can be used most effectively to benefit health care. The volume offers: Recommendations and a proposed framework for strengthening development and use of guidelines. Numerous examples of guidelines. A ready-to-use instrument for assessing the soundness of guidelines. Six case studies exploring issues involved when practitioners use guidelines on a daily basis. With a real-world outlook, the volume reviews efforts by agencies and organizations to disseminate guidelines and examines how well guidelines are functioningâ€"exploring issues such as patient information, liability, costs, computerization, and the adaptation of national guidelines to local needs.

Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.

This report is the twelfth assessment of the National Institutes of Health National Research Service Awards program. The research training needs of the country in basic biomedical, clinical, and behavioral and social sciences are considered. Also included are the training needs of oral health, nursing, and health services research. The report has been broadly constructed to take into account the rapidly evolving national and international health care needs. The past and present are analyzed, and predictions with regard to future needs are presented.

Designated a Doody's Core Title! "This is a valuable resource for readers seeking basic to advanced information on measurement. It should be on the bookshelf of all researchers, and a requirement for graduate nursing students."Score: 100, 5 stars--Doody's Medical Reviews "...this book is a wonderful shelf reference for nurse researcher mentors and investigators who may need to explore content or use content to design, test, select, and evaluate instruments and methods used in measuring nurse concepts and outcomes."--Clinical Nurse Specialist This fourth edition presents everything nurses and health researchers need to know about designing, testing, selecting, and evaluating instruments and methods for measuring in nursing. Thoroughly updated, this fourth edition now contains only the latest, most cutting-edge measurement instruments that have direct applicability for nurses and health researchers in a variety of roles, including students, clinicians, educators, researchers, administrators, and consultants. Using clear and accessible language, the authors explain in detail, and illustrate by example, how to conduct sound measurement practices that have been adequately tested for reliability and validity. This edition is enriched with topics on the leading edge of nursing and health care research, such as measurement in the digital world, biomedical instrumentation, new clinical data collection methods, and methods for measuring quality of care. Key features: Provides new and emerging strategies for testing the validity of specific measures Discusses computer-based testing: the use of Internet research and data collection Investigates methods for measuring physiological variables using biomedical instrumentation Includes information on measurement practices in clinical research, focusing on clinical data collection methods, such as clinimetrics Identifies the challenges of measuring quality of care and how to address them