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Aspiration pneumonia is associated with significantly high morbidity and mortality rates, accompanied by high health care costs. As a result, aspiration pneumonia preventive efforts are a national priori-ty. The development of an intervention model for the prevention of aspiration pneumonia in high-risk medical-surgical inpatients at an urban teaching hospital is described. The intervention model consists of the implementation and evaluation of a risk assessment tool and development of an aspiration pneumonia prevention protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the upheavals of its long history, India's traditions and mores have been continuously evolving. India has absorbed, adopted, and adapted outside cultures and influences, which have merged into Indian society. This article describes the traditional practices of childbearing and neonatal care in India today. The impact of 850 million people on the health care system along with the educational process for the Indian nurse is discussed. The author reports on her neonatal care experiences over the past 9 years in India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because of trends in the health care environment, hospitals are searching for ways to continuously improve the quality of care and to decrease the costs of care. One approach that is gaining widespread recognition throughout the United States is the use of case management and practice guidelines such as critical paths, CareMaps, and in the neonatal field, NeoMaps. The NeoMap is a clinical tool which delineates practice guidelines for each discipline that provide care to a specific infant population. It reduces variation in clinical process and thereby has been shown to improve the quality of infant care. When practice guidelines are linked to both health and economic outcomes, they have significant impact on health care costs. In this paper, case management and the development of the NeoMap will be described in relation to the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at Pennsylvania Hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]