Journals
2012 EN
Mary Hardy · Steven H. Stumpf · M. Bridget Zimmerman
+1 more
Purpose Safety of dietary supplements has been an area of concern for regulators, the health care community and consumers. The ability of the FDA to assess validity of these concerns has been hampered by small numbers of voluntary AE reports. In 2006 Congress mandated all serious adverse events be reported by dietary supplement manufacturers. We present the first systematic analysis of the initial two years of reports.
Journals
2012 EN
Rebecca Erwin Wells · Gloria Y. Yeh · Catherine E. Kerr
+9 more
Purpose Fifty percent of adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD) within 5 years. Preliminary data suggest that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) increases gray matter density of the hippocampus, which atrophies in AD. We studied the safety, feasibility, and impact of MBSR on brain function, memory, and quality of life (QOL) among adults with MCI.
Journals
2012 EN
Lesley Braun · M Dooley · Catherine Forrester
+2 more
Purpose Relatively little is known about the patterns of complementary medicine (CM) use by HIV-positive people in the last decade, since the introduction of contemporary antiretroviral therapy (ART), or their information requirements. As ART use has evolved, CM use is likely to have also changed over time, however this has yet to be established. This is of relevance to health care providers, partly because of potential risks including drug interactions, but also to understand reasons for use and intended benefits, such as managing antiretroviral therapy (ART) side effects and/or addressing existing disease symptoms. The primary aim of this study is to establish the current patterns of use of CMs by HIV-positive people in Australia. Secondary aims are to identify their main information sources and the prevalence of potential drug interactions and suspected adverse reactions to CMs.
Journals
2012 EN
Ruth Q. Wolever · Kyra J. Bobinet · Kristen M. McCabe
+4 more
Purpose Highly stressed employees are subject to greater health risks, costs, and productivity losses than those with normal stress levels. To address this issue, work-site stress management programs must be able to engage individuals as well as capture data on stress, health indices, work productivity, and healthcare costs. In this randomized controlled pilot, our primary objective was to evaluate the viability and proof of concept for two innovative mind-body workplace stress reduction programs, setting the stage for larger cost-effectiveness trials. A second objective was to evaluate two delivery venues of the mindfulness intervention (online versus in-person). Methods
Journals
2012 EN
Elisabeth Preston · Louise Ada · Catherine M. Dean
+3 more
Background E-learning is a common and popular mode of educational delivery, but little is known about its effectiveness in teaching practical skills. The aim of this study was to determine whether the Physiotherapy eSkills Training Online resource in addition to usual teaching improved the performance of practical skills in physiotherapy students. Method This study was a non-randomised controlled trial. The participants were graduate entry physiotherapy students enrolled in consecutive semesters of a neurological physiotherapy unit of study. The experimental group received the Physiotherapy eSkills Training Online resource as well as usual teaching. The Physiotherapy eSkills Training Online resource is an online resource incorporating (i) video-clips of patient-therapist simulations; (ii) supportive text describing the aim, rationale, equipment, key points, common errors and methods of progression; and (iii) a downloadable PDF document incorporating the online text information and a still image of the video-clip for each practical skill. The control group received usual teaching only. The primary outcomes were the overall performance of practical skills as well as their individual components, measured using a practical examination. Results The implementation of the Physiotherapy eSkills Training Online resource resulted in an increase of 1.6 out of 25 (95% CI −0.1 to 3.3) in the experimental group compared with the control group. In addition, the experimental group scored 0.5 points out of 4 (95% CI 0 to 1.1) higher than the control group for ‘effectiveness of the practical skill’ and 0.6 points out of 4 (95% CI 0.1 to 1.1) higher for ‘rationale for the practical skill’. Conclusion There was improvement in performance of practical skills in students who had access to the Physiotherapy eSkills Training Online resource in addition to usual teaching. Students considered the resource to be very useful for learning.
Journals
2012 EN
Gerry King · Catherine O’Donnell · David Boddy
+3 more
Background The major problem facing health and social care systems globally today is the growing challenge of an elderly population with complex health and social care needs. A longstanding challenge to the provision of high quality, effectively coordinated care for those with complex needs has been the historical separation of health and social care. Access to timely and accurate data about patients and their treatments has the potential to deliver better care at less cost. Methods To explore the way in which structural, professional and geographical boundaries have affected e-health implementation in health and social care, through an empirical study of the implementation of an electronic version of Single Shared Assessment (SSA) in Scotland, using three retrospective, qualitative case studies in three different health board locations. Results Progress in effectively sharing electronic data had been slow and uneven. One cause was the presence of established structural boundaries, which lead to competing priorities, incompatible IT systems and infrastructure, and poor cooperation. A second cause was the presence of established professional boundaries, which affect staffs’ understanding and acceptance of data sharing and their information requirements. Geographical boundaries featured but less prominently and contrasting perspectives were found with regard to issues such as co-location of health and social care professionals. Conclusions To provide holistic care to those with complex health and social care needs, it is essential that we develop integrated approaches to care delivery. Successful integration needs practices such as good project management and governance, ensuring system interoperability, leadership, good training and support, together with clear efforts to improve working relations across professional boundaries and communication of a clear project vision. This study shows that while technological developments make integration possible, long-standing boundaries constitute substantial risks to IT implementations across the health and social care interface which those initiating major changes would do well to consider before committing to the investment.
Journals
2012 EN
Helen Cheyne · Len Dalgleish · Janet Tucker
+4 more
Background The importance of respecting women’s wishes to give birth close to their local community is supported by policy in many developed countries. However, persistent concerns about the quality and safety of maternity care in rural communities have been expressed. Safe childbirth in rural communities depends on good risk assessment and decision making as to whether and when the transfer of a woman in labour to an obstetric led unit is required. This is a difficult decision. Wide variation in transfer rates between rural maternity units have been reported suggesting different decision making criteria may be involved; furthermore, rural midwives and family doctors report feeling isolated in making these decisions and that staff in urban centres do not understand the difficulties they face. In order to develop more evidence based decision making strategies greater understanding of the way in which maternity care providers currently make decisions is required. This study aimed to examine how midwives working in urban and rural settings and obstetricians make intrapartum transfer decisions, and describe sources of variation in decision making. Methods The study was conducted in three stages. 1. 20 midwives and four obstetricians described factors influencing transfer decisions. 2. Vignettes depicting an intrapartum scenario were developed based on stage one data. 3. Vignettes were presented to 122 midwives and 12 obstetricians who were asked to assess the level of risk in each case and decide whether to transfer or not. Social judgment analysis was used to identify the factors and factor weights used in assessment. Signal detection analysis was used to identify participants’ ability to distinguish high and low risk cases and personal decision thresholds. Results When reviewing the same case information in vignettes midwives in different settings and obstetricians made very similar risk assessments. Despite this, a wide range of transfer decisions were still made, suggesting that the main source of variation in decision making and transfer rates is not in the assessment but the personal decision thresholds of clinicians. Conclusions Currently health care practice focuses on supporting or improving decision making through skills training and clinical guidelines. However, these methods alone are unlikely to be effective in improving consistency of decision making.
Journals
2012 EN
Kailah Davis · Catherine J. Staes · Jeffrey Duncan
+2 more
Background Death records are a rich source of data, which can be used to assist with public surveillance and/or decision support. However, to use this type of data for such purposes it has to be transformed into a coded format to make it computable. Because the cause of death in the certificates is reported as free text, encoding the data is currently the single largest barrier of using death certificates for surveillance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using a pipeline, composed of a detection rule and a natural language processor, for the real time encoding of death certificates using the identification of pneumonia and influenza cases as an example and demonstrating that its accuracy is comparable to existing methods. Results A Death Certificates Pipeline (DCP) was developed to automatically code death certificates and identify pneumonia and influenza cases. The pipeline used MetaMap to code death certificates from the Utah Department of Health for the year 2008. The output of MetaMap was then accessed by detection rules which flagged pneumonia and influenza cases based on the Centers of Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) case definition. The output from the DCP was compared with the current method used by the CDC and with a keyword search. Recall, precision, positive predictive value and F-measure with respect to the CDC method were calculated for the two other methods considered here. The two different techniques compared here with the CDC method showed the following recall/ precision results: DCP: 0.998/0.98 and keyword searching: 0.96/0.96. The F-measure were 0.99 and 0.96 respectively (DCP and keyword searching). Both the keyword and the DCP can run in interactive form with modest computer resources, but DCP showed superior performance. Conclusion The pipeline proposed here for coding death certificates and the detection of cases is feasible and can be extended to other conditions. This method provides an alternative that allows for coding free-text death certificates in real time that may increase its utilization not only in the public health domain but also for biomedical researchers and developers. Trial Registration This study did not involved any clinical trials.
Journals
2012 EN
Catherine Yu · Janet Parsons · Muhammad Mamdani
+5 more
Background Given that patients provide the majority of their own diabetes care, patient self-management training has increasingly become recognized as an important strategy with which to improve quality of care. However, participation in self management programs is low. In addition, the efficacy of current behavioural interventions wanes over time, reducing the impact of self-management interventions on patient health. Web-based interventions have the potential to bridge the gaps in diabetes care and self-management. Methods Our objective is to improve self-efficacy, quality of life, self-care, blood pressure, cholesterol and glycemic control and promote exercise in people with type 2 diabetes through the rigorous development and use of a web-based patient self-management intervention. This study consists of five phases: (1) intervention development; (2) feasibility testing; (3) usability testing; (4) intervention refinement; and (5) intervention evaluation using mixed methods. We will employ evidence-based strategies and tools, using a theoretical framework of self-efficacy, then elicit user feedback through focus groups and individual user testing sessions. Using iterative redesign the intervention will be refined. Once finalized, the impact of the website on patient self-efficacy, quality of life, self-care, HbA1c, LDL-cholesterol, blood pressure and weight will be assessed through a non-randomized observational cohort study using repeated measures modeling and individual interviews. Discussion Increasing use of the World Wide Web by consumers for health information and ongoing revolutions in social media are strong indicators that users are primed to welcome a new era of technology in health care. However, their full potential is hindered by limited knowledge regarding their effectiveness, poor usability, and high attrition rates. Our development and research agenda aims to address these limitations by improving usability, identifying characteristics associated with website use and attrition, and developing strategies to sustain patient use in order to maximize clinical outcomes.
Journals
2012 EN
Catherine Kahabuka · Karen Marie Moland · Gunnar Kvåle
+1 more
Background There is growing evidence that patients frequently bypass primary health care (PHC) facilities in favour of higher level hospitals regardless of substantial additional time and costs. Among the reasons given for bypassing are poor services (including lack of drugs and diagnostic facilities) and lack of trust in health workers. The World Health Report 2008 “PHC now more than ever” pointed to the importance of organizing health services around people’s needs and expectations as one of the four main issues of PHC reforms. There is limited documentation of user’s expectations to services offered at PHC facilities. The current study is a community extension of a hospital-based survey that showed a high bypassing frequency of PHC facilities among caretakers seeking care for their underfive children at two district hospitals. We aimed to explore caretakers’ perceptions and expectations to services offered at PHC facilities in their area with reference to their experiences seeking care at such facilities. Methods We conducted four community-based focus group discussions (FGD’s) with 47 caretakers of underfive children in Muheza district of Tanga region, Tanzania in October 2009. Results Lack of clinical examinations and laboratory tests, combined with shortage of drugs and health workers, were common experiences. Across all the focus group discussions, unpleasant health workers’ behaviors, lack of urgency and unnecessary delays were major complaints. In some places, unauthorized fees reduced access to services. Conclusion The study revealed significant disappointments among caretakers with regard to the quality of services offered at PHC facilities in their areas, with implications for their utilization and proper functioning of the referral system. Practices regarding partial drugs administrations, skipping of injections, unofficial payments and consultations by unskilled health care providers need urgent action. There is also a need for proper accountability mechanisms to govern appropriate allocation and monitoring of health care resources and services in Tanzania.