Thousands of measures are in use today to assess health and health care in the United States. Although many of these measures provide useful information, their usefulness in either gauging or guiding performance improvement in health and health care is seriously limited by their sheer number, as well as their lack of consistency, compatibility, reliability, focus, and organization. To achieve better health at lower cost, all stakeholders - including health professionals, payers, policy makers, and members of the public - must be alert to what matters most. What are the core measures that will yield the clearest understanding and focus on better health and well-being for Americans? Vital Signs explores the most important issues - healthier people, better quality care, affordable care, and engaged individuals and communities - and specifies a streamlined set of 15 core measures. These measures, if standardized and applied at national, state, local, and institutional levels across the country, will transform the effectiveness, efficiency, and burden of health measurement and help accelerate focus and progress on our highest health priorities. Vital Signs also describes the leadership and activities necessary to refine, apply, maintain, and revise the measures over time, as well as how they can improve the focus and utility of measures outside the core set. If health care is to become more effective and more efficient, sharper attention is required on the elements most important to health and health care. Vital Signs lays the groundwork for the adoption of core measures that, if systematically applied, will yield better health at a lower cost for all Americans.

Vital signs, such as heart rate and respiration rate, are useful to health monitoring because they can provide important physiological insights for medical diagnosis and well-being management. Most traditional methods for measuring vital signs require a person to wear biomedical devices, such as a capnometer, a pulse oximeter, or an electrocardiogram sensor. These contact-based technologies are inconvenient, cumbersome, and uncomfortable to use. There is a compelling need for technologies that enable contact-free, easily deployable, and long-term monitoring of vital signs for healthcare. Contactless Vital Signs Monitoring presents a systematic and in-depth review on the principles, methodologies, and opportunities of using different wavelengths of an electromagnetic spectrum to measure vital signs from the human face and body contactlessly. The volume brings together pioneering researchers active in the field to report the latest progress made, in an intensive and structured way. It also presents various healthcare applications using camera and radio frequency-based monitoring, from clinical care to home care, to sport training and automotive, such as patient/neonatal monitoring in intensive care units, general wards, emergency department triage, MR/CT cardiac and respiratory gating, sleep centers, baby/elderly care, fitness cardio training, driver monitoring in automotive settings, and more. This book will be an important educational source for biomedical researchers, AI healthcare researchers, computer vision researchers, wireless-sensing researchers, doctors/clinicians, physicians/psychologists, and medical equipment manufacturers. - Includes various contactless vital signs monitoring techniques, such as optical-based, radar-based, WiFi-based, RFID-based, and acoustic-based methods. - Presents a thorough introduction to the measurement principles, methodologies, healthcare applications, hardware set-ups, and systems for contactless measurement of vital signs using camera or RF sensors. - Presents the opportunities for the fusion of camera and RF sensors for contactless vital signs monitoring and healthcare.

The classic guide to the undifferentiated patient–enhanced by new cases A Doody's Core Title for 2024 & 2024! Technological advances have taken testing and imaging to remarkable new places—yet establishing patient history and performing physical examinations are more important now than ever. This classic guide has been showing students and clinicians how to approach the diagnostic process thoughtfully and systematically for decades—and this revised edition brings you completely up to date. Part physical examination primer, part differential diagnosis tool, DeGowin's Diagnostic Examination provides the information and insights you need to make accurate, evidence-based diagnostic hypotheses. Covering all physical exam techniques and procedures, this updated edition shows how to collect clinical findings gleaned from the physical examination and synthesize them into a differential diagnosis. • Covers the latest developments in evidence-based physical examinations • Explains how to obtain a complete patient history and perform a thorough physical exam • Organized by signs, symptoms, and syndromes to make finding what you need quick and easy • Connects symptoms and signs with disease pathophysiology • Facilitates efficient, cost-effective diagnostic testing using focused differential diagnoses This classic guide continues to effectively combine current diagnostic practices with the unchanging aspects of clinical medicine.

Successor to the editors' groundbreaking book on medical emergency teams, Textbook of Rapid Response Systems addresses the problem of patient safety and quality of care; the logistics of creating an RRS (resource allocation, process design, workflow, and training); the implementation of an RRS (organizational issues, challenges); and the evaluation of program results. Based on successful RRS models that have resulted in reduced in-hospital cardiac arrest and overall hospital death rates, this book is a practical guide for physicians, hospital administrators, and other healthcare professionals who wish to initiate an RRS program within their own institutions.

Deliver quality healthcare in the most challenging field conditions Full of practical clinical pearls and proven strategies, this indispensible guide shows you how to operate outside your comfort zone and devise effective treatment solutions when the traditional tools (medications, equipment, and staff) are unavailable—or when you need to provide care outside of your specialty. Improvised Medicine is a must for anyone who plans to work in global, disaster, or other resource-poor settings. FEATURES: Simple-to-follow directions, diagrams, and illustrations describe practical techniques and the improvised equipment necessary to provide quality care during crises. Contains improvisations in anesthesia and airway management, dentistry, gynecology/obstetrics, infectious disease/laboratory diagnosis, internal medicine, otolaryngology, pediatrics and malnutrition, orthopedics, psychiatry, and surgery. Also includes basic disaster communication techniques, post-disaster forensics, a model hospital disaster plan, and innovative patient-transport methods. LEARN HOW TO: Make an endotracheal tube in seconds Perform digital-oral and blind-nasotracheal intubations Make plaster bandages for splints/casts Give open-drop ether, ketamine drips, and halothane Use subcutaneous/intraperitoneal rehydration/transfusion Make ORS and standard nutrition formulas Clean, disinfect, and sterilize equipment for reuse Warm blood units in seconds inexpensively Take/view stereoscopic x-rays with standard equipment Quickly and easily stop postpartum hemorrhage Fashion surgical equipment from common items Evacuate patients easily for high-rise hospitals Make esophageal and precordial stethoscopes Quickly improvise a saline lock Make ECG electrode/defibrillator pads and ultrasound gel

For courses in Human Physiology Don't just study-visualize, explore and solve problems in human physiology with Principles of Human Physiology! Principles of Human Physiology, Sixth Edition uses a precise and clear-cut writing style to offer lasting comprehension for Human Physiology students, extending to real-life application in the field. The Sixth Edition provides essential digital resources to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The exceptional art program is consistent, scientifically accurate, and visually appealing. Stanfield's renowned flexible pedagogy allows instructors to choose what is essential to students when mapping out their course. MasteringA&P not included. Students, if MasteringA&P is a recommended/mandatory component of the course, please ask your instructor for the correct ISBN and course ID. MasteringA&P should only be purchased when required by an instructor. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information. MasteringA&P is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with Principles of Human Physiology to engage students and improve results. Instructors ensure students arrive ready to learn by assigning educationally effective content before class, and encourage critical thinking and retention with in-class resources like Learning Catalytics™.

The perfect “bridge” book between physical exam textbooks and clinical reference books Covers the essentials of the diagnostic exam procedure and the preparation of the patient record Includes overviews of each organ/region/system, followed by the definition of key presenting signs and their possible causes Unrivaled in its comprehensive coverage of differential diagnosis, organized by systems, signs, and syndromes