Medicine in China: Historical Artifacts and Images
This volume focuses on the world of oriental medicine and Chinese medical literature and presents an in-depth view of the artworks and literature associated with more than 2000 years of the Chinese healing arts. Historical manuscripts and printed texts, artefacts used by physicians and pharmacists, such as decorated medicine flasks, works of fine art and illustrations for teaching purposes and other items show the attention paid to aesthetic values in China's everyday culture in the past.
Despite the fact that since 1985 the government of Quebec increased by 5.75 % on average the amount of money spent on healthcare per year, little improvement was noted. It is obvious that an optimal use of resources is essential to reduce waiting times and provide safer and faster services to patients. The use of new technology can contribute to improve the healthcare system efficiency. Our study aims to assess the impact of a medication distribution technology on 1) the performance of a health and social services center’s pharmacy, 2) the performance of one care unit in a nursing home and on 3) the medication-use process safety. To measure performance we were inspired by the Lean approach. The results show that medication distribution technology is considered as an effective way to significantly detect medication errors, to allow nurses to focus more on patients and pharmacy to react more rapidly to changes in patient medications.