Use of severity to evaluate appropriateness of admissions and length of stay.

We undertook a case study for a Canadian teaching hospital to see if use of a severity of illness system could facilitate management of utilization practice in the hospital. The two issues selected were low severity emergency room admissions and length of stay on medical services. Use of a severity system allows for comparisons within case mix groups and also should control for large differences in severity within CMGs. The results of the study were consistent with the prior expectation of the hospital with respect to the relative efficiency of the physicians under study.

The adjustment of students with learning disabilities to university and its relationship to self-esteem and self-efficacy.

Using self-report questionnaires, this study found that a sample of 34 university students with learning disabilities reported significantly poorer self-esteem, academic adjustment, and personal-emotional adjustment than a sample of 31 non-learning-disabled students. For both groups, self-esteem correlated positively with general self-efficacy. Both variables correlated positively with adjustment to university.