Ward round documentation in a major trauma centre: can we improve patient safety?

Our objective was to improve documentation and patient safety in a major trauma centre. A retrospective audit was undertaken in March 2014. Ward round entries for each orthopaedic patients on three dates were assessed against standards and analysed. The audit was repeated in April 2014, and again in August 2014. Thorough documentation is paramount in a major trauma centre. It forms a useful record of the patients hospital stay, is a legal document and is highlighted in national guidelines. It provides a basis for good handover, ensuring continuation of care and maintaining patient safety. Resultant poor compliance with Royal College guidelines in the initial audit led to the production of a new electronic based note keeping system. A meeting was held with all staff prior to introduction. Our initial results gained 75 entries, and none showed full compliance. Mean compliance per entry was 59% (0-81%). The second attempt gained 90 entries, with 30 from the weekend. Mean compliance per entry 97%. Third attempt received 61 entries, with 27 from the weekend. Mean compliance was 96%, meaning that the improvement was being maintained. Recent distressing reports regarding patient highlighted the importance of patient. Our initial audit proved there were many areas lacking in our documentation and improvement was necessary. Prior to introducing electronic systems, the implemented change has produced improvement in documentation, and provides a useful handover tool for staff

The computation of the cohomology rings of all groups of order 128

We describe the computation of the mod-2 cohomology rings of all 2328 groups of order 128. One consequence is that all groups of order less than 256 satisfy the strong form of Benson's Regularity Conjecture.Comment: 15 pages; revised versio

Extraction of black hole coalescence waveforms from noisy data

We describe an independent analysis of LIGO data for black hole coalescence events. Gravitational wave strain waveforms are extracted directly from the data using a filtering method that exploits the observed or expected time-dependent frequency content. Statistical analysis of residual noise, after filtering out spectral peaks (and considering finite bandwidth), shows no evidence of non-Gaussian behaviour. There is also no evidence of anomalous causal correlation between noise signals at the Hanford and Livingston sites. The extracted waveforms are consistent with black hole coalescence template waveforms provided by LIGO. Simulated events, with known signals injected into real noise, are used to determine uncertainties due to residual noise and demonstrate that our results are unbiased. Conceptual and numerical differences between our RMS signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and the published matched-filter detection SNRs are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Version accepted for publicatio