As a pet owner you are likely to someday face the decision to euthanize your pet and as a veterinarian or veterinary technician you are the one to perform this euthanasia. The reason for euthanasia may be depending on the animal, for instance illness, age and behavioral problems or depending on the needs of the owner or the society, so called convenience euthanasia. Many different euthanasia methods can be used when putting an animal to sleep. The method preferred in animal hospitals is pharmacological euthanasia either by inhalation of anesthetics or by injection of a euthanasia agent. If the pet owner wishes to be present during the procedure it is important to prepare him for what will happen. Many animals are sedated before the euthanasia in order to reduce anxiety and to ensure a softer transition between life and death. The euthanasia agent can then be administrated for instance intravenously or intraperitonealy.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

There are several different kinds of bacteria that has developed resistance against the antibiotic agents used in todays medicine. Most of them has evolved from the human health care but several of them has gone over to also cause problems in the animal health care. They often occur as nosocomial infections and the greatest risk of exposure to them is during health care. Since infections with a resistant bacterium can be difficult to treat, it is desirable to prevent this spread, especially since an animal treated in a hospital often is more susceptible to infection, due to their primary condition. In Sweden the current resistance situation is good and is yearly monitored by the Swedish Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring (SVARM) programme.

The aim of the project was to investigate if Swedish rodents, brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), house mouse (Mus musculus), wood mouse (Apodemus spp) and water vole (Arvicola terrestris) captured in pig herds and in urban areas, constitute a reservoir for pathogenic Leptospira spp. Under Swedish conditions leptospirosis gives rise to reproductive disorders in pigs and symptoms of flu in humans. It has long been established that rodents are chronic carriers of pathogenic leptospires in their kidneys, and can spread the bacteria with urine. The old nomenclature of serovoars is still in use, but a new system of genetic classification has developed and today the genus Leptospira contains 17 species. There are several diagnostic test developed for leptospirosis.

Vården i Sverige har sedan länge kännetecknas av långa vårdköer och bristande resurser. Allt fler sjukhus och vårdcentraler däribland Brahehälsan, Hälsocentralen Akka, Akutmottagningen på Länssjukhuset i Kalmar samt Diagnostiskt centrum på Länssjukhuset i Kalmar väljer att möta dessa problem med hjälp av ?Lean Healthcare?. Denna nya modell och den filosofi den bygger på bidrar till ett nytt arbetssätt som är tänkt att medföra effektivisering av sjukvården. Är effektivisering av sjukvården det verkliga motivet eller finns det bakomliggande motiv för att införa ?Lean Healthcare?? Vid allt förändringsarbete är det viktigt att ha med sig medarbetarna.

Literature describes what it is like to be a leader in the healthcare and what is looked upon as the most characteristic quality for female leadership. Women often use a leadership technique that motivates the employee and they allow themselves to develop a humanitarian leadership. The aim of this study was to describe female head nurses? experience of their leadership in healthcare. The collection of data has been carried out from interviews.

Our companion animals can, with or without symptoms, carry infectious agents which have a potential to induce diseases in man, so called zoonoses. An immune compromised person has an increased risk of becoming infected by various agents, and thus also has an increased risk to become infected by one?s own companion animals. A study was carried out within the veterinary program at SLU, Sweden, based on a questionnaire answered by 31 physicians, 31 veterinarians and interviews of 30 immune compromised persons in Sweden. The study investigated the following questions: Which zoonoses do physicians and veterinarians consider to be the most important to inform immunecompromised persons about? How are immunecompromised persons being informed by their physicians about the risk of catching zoonoses from their companion animals? How are the owners of zoonosis-infected animals being informed by their veterinarians about zoonoses? Does veterinary medicine and human medicine communicate about zoonoses, in order to take the best care of immunecompromised persons in contact with animals? The results of our study imply that: - Physicians and veterinarians differ about which zoonoses immunecompromised persons should be informed about. - Only oral information is passed to immunecompromised persons and animal owners.

Literature describes what it is like to be a leader in the healthcare and what is looked upon as the most characteristic quality for female leadership. Women often use a leadership technique that motivates the employee and they allow themselves to develop a humanitarian leadership. The aim of this study was to describe female head nurses? experience of their leadership in healthcare. The collection of data has been carried out from interviews.

Despite the fact that men dominate substance abuse research and that most programs to target substance abuse therefore are developed by and for men, very little is known about the fact that substance abusing men can also be parents. Mothers are up until today regarded as the most important parent even though society is changing and fathers are taken a more active part in childrearing. The average father today still spends significantly less time with his children than the average mother does and marginalised drug abusing fathers often disappear from their families altogether. The goal and purpose of this paper has been that through a qualitative analyses of written sources and qualitative interviews with healthcare professionals and social workers recognise how marginalised drug abusing fathers interests of taking part in their children's lives are met by healthcare, treatment and child protection agencies and how we can understand marginalised fathering as an extension of how we view ordinary fathering. I wanted to examine if there are any specific actions taken in involving these men as fathers and how we can understand their situation.

Background: When someone suffers a spinal cord injury, the nerve impulses between the brain, the muscles and the skin are intercepted, thereby resulting in motion and sensory loss.  During the recovery process, healthcare professionals play a vital role in ensuring that the patients have a positive experience of care, recovery and rehabilitation.Aim: The aim of this study is to determine how patients at a rehabilitation clinic in Sweden experienced the following: The patient?s experience of how well they were received by staff, the staff?s ability to explain and inform the patient of important details concerning their care and the staff?s ability to involve the patients in their own care.Method: A qualitative interview approach was used when undertaking this study. Six patients at the rehabilitation clinic were interviewed, and the interviews were later analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Result: The collected material was divided into ten categories that were sorted into three subheadings: reception of staff, information and involvement. Reception of staff, with categories: helpfulness, commitment, consideration, professionalism and reception. Information, with categories: if the patients felt well-informed.

Cancer is one of the most feared diseases in veterinary medicine today, and the incidence is higher than ever due to the fact that our companion animals live longer then they did ten to twenty years ago. Cancer is also one of the most common causes of mortality in older companion animals. This literature review will be about two of the currently most common form of cancer treatment of companion animals in Swedish animal hospitals, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. There will also be a section of general nursing care for cancer patients. The section of chemotherapy will describe the indications for choosing chemotherapy, the way to administrate chemotherapeutic drugs, describe specific chemotherapeutic drugs, potential side effects of chemotherapy, and how to handle and store chemotherapeutic drugs safely. The section of radiation therapy will describe the current devices for delivering radiation therapy, describe the indications for choosing radiation therapy and describe potential side effects that radiation therapy may cause.

IT is often seen as a solution to many problems concerning effectiveness in organizations. Information systems within the healthcare sector is often viewed as medical devices rather than just systems or services. These medical devices are thoroughly regulated by laws, standards and certifications. In this study I participated in an innovative project that aimed to bring new life and use to the old fashioned patient journal by giving it a visual representation through the use of an avatar. I aimed to study the effects of regulators connected with the patient journal as a source of information for the innovative project.

The study is based on a new approach on how Swedish healthcare is supposed to be controlled and organized. There is a renowned administration problem within Swedish healthcare, which seems to be an obstacle to exploit the resources to the fullest. The latest venture within the healthcare system is patient involvement, where the patients become co-producers of their own care, which aims to both improve and make healthcare more efficient. A few wards in Sweden have implemented this new approach whereupon the study intends to discuss the effectiveness and efficiency in some of these.The study is restricted to three wards, whereof two of these are inpatient wards and the other one is an outpatient ward, within the medical clinic in Jönköping County Council, which has implemented the patient involvement approach in their daily work. The methodology for this study is qualitative in its nature where a time study of personnel time allocation and supplementary interviews with managing nurses on the wards have been conducted.

The analysis of acute phase protein serum amyloid A (SAA) has recently been brought into clinical use in veterinary medicine. Some of the difficulties with incorporating the SAA method in clinical practice have been the expensive and rather large equipment required for the method. Due to these difficulties only larger clinics can afford to use the SAA analysis.The company Equinostic has recently developed a smaller instrument that costs one-tenth of a larger instrument. The instrument is named EVA1 and has so far only been used to analyze SAA in horses.The aim of this study was to investigate if the EVA1 instrument could be used to analyze SAA in cats. This study included 24 serum samples from cat, which were first analyzed twice on the EVA1 instrument and then sent to the Strömsholm Referral Animal Hospital in Sweden where they reanalyzed the samples using a validated reference method.