Biomedical subjects

J L Teeters

Publications and source records attributed to J L Teeters.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1995

CQI case study: reducing medication errors.

BACKGROUND: This article describes how the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee at Lutheran General Hospital (Park Ridge, IL) formed a continuous quality improvement (CQI) team and used statistical process control (SPC) tools to assess efforts to reduce medication errors. METHODS: The team worked with the nursing quality council to develop an intravenous (IV) training module for nurses that effectively decreased the average number of errors per month. The article illustrates the effective use of a run chart, a Pareto chart, and two types of control charts (p-charts and np-charts) to identify an opportunity for improvement, develop an improvement strategy, and measure the effectiveness of the intervention. CONCLUSION: Lessons learned from this case include the following: 1) Although run charts can be used as a preliminary step to determine whether a process has common-cause or special-cause variation, p-charts or np-charts are more precise tools for identifying special causes and for measuring the impact of interventions; 2) Pareto charts are useful for focusing on the areas of a process that will have the greatest impact in achieving the desired results; 3) When p-charts show little variation in control limits from month to month, the np-chart is an appropriate and more user-friendly alternative; and 4) In addition to validating the overall effectiveness of the intervention, the np-chart also helped to identify where the intervention failed.

Health Services Research↗

PubMed1993

Quantitative modeling of responses of anuran retina: stimulus shape and size dependency.

Teeters and Arbib presented a model of the anuran retina which qualitatively accounts for the characteristic response properties used to distinguish ganglion cell type in anurans. In this paper we test the model's ability to reproduce quantitatively tabulated data on the dependency on stimulus shape and size, with a new implementation of the model in the neural simulation language NSL. Data of Ewert and Hock relating toad R2, R3, and R4 ganglion cell responses to moving worm, antiworm, and square-shaped stimuli of various edge lengths are used to test stimulus shape and size dependency. A close match to the data can be achieved by tuning some of the model parameters while still retaining the characteristic responses to the typical stimulus types. We stress here the importance of a populational approach to the models. We place more emphasis on the variation of response properties in a population of neurons of the same class, rather than questing for the neuron of a given type. As an example of the populational approach we offer a model for the respiratory R3 response following researchers who argue that a subclass of R3 neurons are activated by stationary boundaries owing to the anuran's self induced respiratory eye movement.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1991

A model of anuran retina relating interneurons to ganglion cell responses.

A model is presented which accounts for many characteristic response properties used to classify anuran ganglion cell types while being consistent with data concerning interneurons. In the model color is ignored and input stimuli are assumed to be only black and white at high contrast. We show that accurate ganglion cell responses are obtained even with simplified receptors and horizontal cells: Receptors are modeled as responding with a step change, while horizontal cells respond only to global changes in intensity brought about by full field illumination changes. A hyperpolarizing and depolarizing bipolar cell are generated by subtracting local receptor and horizontal potentials. Two transient amacrine cells (On and Off) are generated using a high-pass filter like mechanism with a thresholded output which responds to positive going changes in the corresponding bipolar cell potentials. The model shows how a selective combination of bipolar and amacrine channels can account for many of the response properties used to classify the anuran ganglion cell types (class-0 through 4) and makes several experimental predictions.

Animals↗