Evaluating quality in acute care using patient reported outcome measures: a scoping review.

The aim of this scoping review is to identify patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) in acute care settings, assess their psychometric properties and provide recommendations for their use in daily practice. We performed a search in the PubMed database to identify publications concerning PROMs in an acute care setting. The COSMIN checklist was used to assess the psychometric properties of the reported PROMs. We found 1407 publications and included 14 articles, describing 15 measures. Most publications provided limited information on psychometric properties. Three generic PROMs were deemed of adequate quality for use in acute care. We recommend future development and evaluation of PROMs focussing on acute care to further evaluate and improve the quality of acute care.

A simple and fast method for determining colony forming units.

AIMS: To develop a flexible and fast colony forming unit quantification method that can be operated in a standard microbiology laboratory. METHODS AND RESULTS: A miniaturized plating method is reported where droplets of bacterial cultures are spotted on agar plates. Subsequently, minicolony spots are imaged with a digital camera and quantified using a dedicated plug-in developed for the freeware program IMAGEJ. A comparison between conventional and minicolony plating of industrial micro-organisms including lactic acid bacteria, Eschericha coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae showed that there was no significant difference in the results obtained with the methods. CONCLUSIONS: The presented method allows downscaling of plating by 100-fold, is flexible, easy-to-use and is more labour-efficient and cost-efficient than conventional plating methods. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: The method can be used for rapid assessment of viable counts of micro-organisms similar to conventional plating using standard laboratory equipment. It is faster and cheaper than conventional plating methods.